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Social Security and Retirement in Latin America: relation to youth unemployment

Bernardo L. Queiroz, Universidade Federal De Minas Gerais
Laeticia R. De Souza, Population Studies Center / University of Campinas (NEPO / UNICAMP)

There are two less studied factors that are normally brought into the discussion of trends in the labor supply of the elderly. First, as mortality declines individuals with worse health reach older ages and are less able to stay in the labor force. The second point is that changes in the elderly labor force participation have an important impact on the jobs available for the youth. In this sense, the labor market functions as a “closed-box” and new workers would only be able to find work if older workers leave the labor force. The aim of this paper is to analyze the former theory in the context of the Brazilian and Latin American economies. In this paper, we use different data sources for a series of Latin America countries since the 1990s to investigate the relation between older adults’ employment and youth unemployment, informal employment and inactivity rates. We also investigate the relation across regions within countries to capture the effects of local labor markets.

Keywords: Human capital and labour markets, Children and youth, Older adults, Population ageing

See paper.

  Presented in Session P19.