Policy Change in Turbulent Times: The Nationalization of Private Pensions in Argentina

Abstract

Argentina has been one of the ‘pioneers’ in Latin American social security development, offering relatively broad coverage for the risks of old age before most other countries in the region (Mesa-Lago 1991, 1994). The first pension scheme for civil servants was created in 1904. After that, a number of schemes catering to specific occupational groups proliferated until pension rights were finally extended to the working classes in the 1940s and 1950s. By 1975 the system provided about 1.65 million benefits (including old-age and widow pensions). However, the financial balance of the system was weak and further deteriorated with the elimination of employer social security contributions by the military government in 1980. After democratization in 1983 employer contributions were reintroduced, but the financial imbalances in the mature social security system continued, leading to poor indexation, falling real benefit and growing pensioner litigation against the state. In the 1990s, a process of neoliberal structural reforms initiated a policy shift to the market. The reform package also included the transformation of public pensions into a mixed public—private system of individual funded accounts inspired by the ‘new ideas’ emanating from the international financial institutions (IFIs) and conservative think tanks.