Friday, April 18, 2008

El Salvador's Private Pension System

Juan Carlos Hidalgo has a post at Cato @ Liberty about El Salvdor's private pension system which just passed it's tenth year.

This week marks the 10-year anniversary of El Salvador’s adoption of a private social security system. Following the example of Chile 17 years earlier, El Salvador moved from a government-run (and bankrupt) pay-as-you-go system to one of individual accounts for workers administered by private operators. Salvadorians are free to choose who runs their pension accounts as well as the conditions of their own retirement.

Today, the combined value of the pension operators’ assets — that is, the savings of the Salvadorian workers — represents 21.5 percent of the country’s GDP.


Okay, so El Salvador has a private pension system and we're still stuck with Social Security? What the hell is wrong with this picture?

2 comments:

Orlando said...

Joe, maybe we need to re-define Third World Country? How about El Salvador organizing a Soveriegn Wealth Fund to help out Citi?

Boomer said...

Yeah, the "Third World" countries seem to be doing okay for a change. I wonder what they will do to screw it up? Maybe by forming Sovereign Wealth funds and making stupid investments. China hasn't had much luck yet - look at their investment in Blackstone (BX).