Social Security, Economic Development and the Labor Force Participation of the Elderly in Latin America

Bernardo L. Queiroz, Cedeplar, UFMG

In this paper I investigate labor force participation of older persons in Latin America. The empirical analysis is divided in two parts. First, I use household survey data from twenty-three (23) Latin American and the Caribbean countries, from around 2005, to perform a cross-country analysis on labor force participation focusing on differences by income level, economic development, characteristics of the labor market and pension system. I also use the data to show different patterns by income level and stage of the demographic transition to describe historical trends in labor force participation rates of older workers. In the second part of the paper, I construct a panel data for 21 Latin American countries to investigate the effects of economic development and social security system in the labor force participation and retirement decisions of the elderly for the past 30 years.