摘要：The 1990s could well qualify as the decade of global pension reform. A number of countries in Latin America and transition economies radically transformed their pension provision, and moved swiftly in the direction of privately provided individual retirement plans. The blueprint for pension reform in these countries was provided by Chile's 1981 pension reform (Barrientos, 1998). The World Bank has played a key role in supporting and financing this model of pension reform elsewhere in the developing world. At one level, the spread of pension reform can be seen as a response to the accelerated demographic and epidemiological transition in developing countries thrusting the issue of old age support to the forefront of development policy. In fact, pension reform has been embedded within structural adjustment, and has largely constituted a response to fiscal deficits and labour market liberalisation. This has narrowed the potential range of policy responses to demographic change available to developing countries. The paper uses a comparative perspective to draw attention to the variety of pension provision in the developing world. It focuses on pensions within the broader context of old age support.
