Tag: Chile
Abstract Purchasing an annuity insures an individual against the risk of outliving their money, by promising a steady stream of income until death. The value of annuities is high in theory, but in practice annuity markets tend to function poorly, with low annuitization rates and high markups. Chile provides an interesting counterexample to this phenomenon,…
Introduction In 1980, the Chilean pension system was in crisis. It was paying more in benefits than it was receiving in contributions, and the projected actuarial imbalance was greater than the country’s Gross Domestic Product.1 The prescribed solution was to radically transform the traditional pay-as-you-go structure to a system based on personal retirement accounts. T…
