Social Security and Living Arrangements of the Elderly in the Developing Countries

Yumiko Kamiya, University of California, Berkeley

In the early 1990’, reform in the social security system in Brazil dramatically expanded pension coverage. After 20 years of military rule, the 1988 Constitution led to parity in pension eligibility between rural and urban workers as well as to increases in the minimum benefits . As a consequence, elderly both in urban and rural areas found a substantial increase in their non-labor incomes. This paper, based on data from the Brazilian National Household Survey (PNAD) examines the determinants of living arrangements of the elderly, and particularly the effects of changes in income due to pension reform on those arrangements. For this purpose, use a decomposition model and an econometrics model (non-parametric regressions and multinomial logit model) to disentangle the roles of demographic and economic factors to determine which factor or combination of factors can account for the observed changes in living arrangements of the elderly.