It has been widely accepted that reforms on pension schemes have led to improvements in the financial viability of the systems. Nevertheless, at the same time it has been shown that fees charged by pension fund managers (PFM) are very high, implying high mark-ups for them and lower expected pensions for the participants. The presence of economies of scale has been suggested as one main reason for...

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This paper estimates social security financial incentives for early retirement using contemporary techniques developed in economics, and compares these estimates to those estimated for developed countries. I find that implicit tax on continued work increases with age and amounts to over one-third of an individual potential earnings at age sixty-five. The pension replacement rate shows the degree...

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The book “Public Policy for an Inclusive Growth” (The book) is an opportune and fortunate document. It is opportune because it is presented at a time in which public policy topics are subject to a wide debate in Mexico, and the discussion is fed with diverse points of view, theoretical and political, from which it is the purpose to analyze, design, redesign, implement, and evaluate the government...

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In this issue of Well-being and Social Policy we have tried to include articles that support the debate around social insurance in health. This is an issue in which simple answers are hardly ever found, and a long term effort is required to understand the idiosyncrasy of each country and the best mix of regulation and financing options. Additionally, the studied cases point out to the need of a...

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The model of health care financing and delivery for which Canada is best known internationally is its universal, single-payer, first-dollar system of coverage for physician and hospital services. For several decades following its establishment in the late 1950's and 1960's, this model provided public finance from the general tax base (like the UK), at levels of generosity, relative to GDP, like...

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This study analyzes achievements and obstacles in the process of moving towards universal coverage of essential health care services in Costa Rica. It describes the country as exemplary in the region, both in terms of population health status as well as health financing indicators. Life expectancy and the level of pre-payment are both comparable to high income countries. However, the process that...

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The Mexican social security system, after operating for over six decades, has managed to provide healthcare for slightly over half the resident population. There are wide geographical and socioeconomic variations in coverage. To provide wider coverage, the Federal Government created the Sistema de Protección Social en Salud (SPSS) for covering low income family. It becomes the third...

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The book by Armendáriz and Morduch focuses on how microfinance institutions work, what has been their impact and whether they are financially sustainable. For such purpose the book can be divided—from my viewpoint—into six sections. The first describes the environment of imperfect information that surrounds credit transactions and the consequences that this entails. First the authors define in a...

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The book by Cristian Baeza and Truman Packard is based on the next hypothesis: adverse health events reduce the consumption of goods and services different from health services, and many households become poor because of that. While the authors recognize that the evidence they present on the topic is limited, they propose the use of a “universal risk pool” as a way to eliminate the problem of...

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One of the central concerns in Latin America an the Caribbean (LAC) has been the reduction of poverty and inequality so prevalent in the continent. Using large world samples, the literature has found that financial development increases economic growth, increases the income of the poor, and reduces inequality. This paper studies the effects of financial development on the whole distribution of...

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Mexican Government’s Banks offer loan guarantees to private banks in order to spur credit directed to non-financial small and medium sized firms and this policy is examined here. Application of representative data to the comparative static analysis of the guarantee-use decision suggests that these schemes, as currently designed, are justifiable from an economic viewpoint. However, there is some...

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This article presents the Mexican experience with the introduction of basic transaction accounts. Basic accounts are relatively cheap simple banking products with restricted functionality targeted at social groups that have limited access to transaction accounts. In Mexico, basic payroll accounts and accounts for the general public were introduced. By law, these products must be offered by all...

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In March 2004, BANSEFI and SAGARPA began a project to examine the impact on households I of the Program to Strengthen the Popular Credit and Savings Sector (Programa de Fortalecimiento del Sector de Ahorro y Crédito Popular), which was designed to help non-bank financial intermediaries to abide by the Ley de Ahorro y Crédito Popular (LACP), passed by the Mexican Congress in 2001. During the...

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Various circumstances make difficult the rigorous study of processes, strategies and impact of V the efforts of financial inclusion and penetration, either at the academie level, in the public policy area or in companies and organizations of financial services industry. The central problem in Mexico has been the lack of a unified agreement on the definition and the low comprehension level of the...

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The article documents the failure of social security in Mexico as an instrument of social protection and evaluates possible reform strategies. It analyses the truncated coverage of these systems for the most vulnerable, the regressive incidence and horizontal inequities of public social security subsidies, and the consequences for old-age poverty and inequalities in basic health opportunities. It...

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Recent multi-pillar pension reforms tighten the link between payroll contributions and benefits, leading critics to argue that they will hurt women, who have less continuous employment and earn lower wages than men. However, these reforms also remove distortions and target redistributions to low earners, which help women. This paper tests these conflicting claims in the case of three Latin...

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Este estudio utiliza información de la Encuesta de Calidad de Vida realizada en Colombia durante 2003 para examinar si el estrato de servicio eléctrico (como proxy del estrato socioeconómico) predice la decisión del tipo de institución y sesión escolar al que asisten los estudiantes. En el modelo de elección por tipo de institución, universidades privadas vs públicas, encuentro que conforme...

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El sistema mexicano de seguridad social, luego de operar por más de seis décadas, ha conseguido proporcionar el servicio de salud para un poco más de la mitad de la población residente. Existen grandes variaciones en la cobertura geográfica y socioeconómica. Para proporcionar una cobertura más amplia, el Gobierno Federal creó el Sistema de Protección Social en Salud (SPSS) para cubrir familias de...

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Existe escasa micro-evidencia sobre la persistencia de los impactos de desastres naturales en el bienestar. Este artículo evalúa el efecto del Huracán Mitch, ocurrido en octubre de 1998, sobre el consumo de los hogares agrícolas nicaragüenses. Los datos pre-post utilizados provienen de un panel representativo nacional recolectado en 1998 y 2001. Una encuesta adicional se realizó en 1999 para...

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Los países de América Latina se encuentran en constante (y creciente) riesgo de ser azotados por desastres naturales. Tan solo, México ha sufrido la peor sequía en seis décadas; en el noreste del país se registraron pérdidas históricas en 2010 debido al huracán Alex, y luego, hubo graves inundaciones en varios estados del sur. Chile (al igual que Haití semanas atrás) captó la atención de todo el...

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