Social Security in Latin America

Pressure Groups, Stratification, and Inequality

Any social scientist who consciously sets out to explore, to understand, and to compare the social security systems of five Latin American nations deserves simultaneously to be encouraged and cautioned. . . . Yet Carmelo Mesa-Lago has not only undertaken the job; he has done so thoroughly, rigorously, and usefully. Nor is his study simply descriptive; on the contrary, it is a truly comparative exercise that presents enormous amounts of detail on each country and then compares them vis-ˆ-vis degree, scope, and depth of coverage.
American Political Science Review

A comprehensive and sophisticated study of the relationship between social security policy and inequality in Latin America. Individual case studies of Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Argentina, and Mexico are presented, that provide a historical analysis of each country's social security policy, the pressure groups involved, the present structure of the systems, and a statistical examination of the inequality among these pressure groups.

about the author

Carmelo Mesa-Lago

Carmelo Mesa-Lago is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics and Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

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Carmelo Mesa-Lago