Private Pension Systems Built on Precarious Foundations: A Cohort Study of Labor-Force Trajectories in Chile.

The success of private pension systems to provide old-age security is mainly a function of continuous individual pension contributions linked to formal employment. Using a rich longitudinal dataset from Chile and employing sequence analysis, this study examines the pension contribution histories and formal employment pathways of a cohort of individuals who began their working lives simultaneously to the introduction of the Chilean private pension system in the early 1980s, which pioneered private-oriented pension reforms worldwide. Results show that more than half of the individuals from this cohort developed labor-force trajectories inconsistent with continuous pension contributions and formal employment, which particularly affects women and lower educated people.