ABSTRACT
Latin America’s high levels of external debt were the cause of high inflation and negative economic growth in the 1980s, a period known as “The lost decade.” This chapter presents an outline of social security reform achieved in the 1990s in Latin America, focusing on pension and health care systems, and mentions the primary factors leading to this reform. It describes the characteristics of the social security system and the primary factors leading to its formation before the 1980s. The chapter explains the outline of the social security reform, implemented in the 1990s. It discusses the political and economic factors that promoted social security reform in the 1990s. Latin America consists of a diverse group of countries with regard to economic, political and social characteristics, from Brazil, with a population exceeding 160 million, to the Caribbean countries, each with a population of several tens of thousands.
