The Chilean Pension Reform Turns 25: Lessons from the Social Protection Survey

This chapter introduces the Encuesta de Previsión Social (EPS, or Social Protection Survey), a recently developed longitudinal survey of individual respondents that provides invaluable new information for microeconomic analyses of key aspects of the Chilean pension system, and illustrates some of the analyses possible with these data. Initiated in 2002, the EPS fielded a follow-up round in 2004; additional survey waves were scheduled for 2006 and every two years thereafter (funding permitting). In addition, the research team has worked to link respondent records to a wide range of historical administrative files on contribution patterns, benefit payments, and other program features. Among the findings is that participation rates are much higher with automatic enrolment in retirement plans than with opt-in enrolment. Many individuals view the employer default savings option as an implicit endorsement of both the contribution rate and the distribution of funds. Default choices are not neutral; they play a role in every stage of the lifetime savings cycle, including savings plan participation, contributions, asset allocation, rollovers, and decumulation.