Over the last decade Latin American countries have served as the world's laboratory for pension systems based upon individual retirement savings accounts. In the 1990s several countries in the region followed Chile's lead in setting up individual accounts, and since that time countries...

Many countries' aging populations have made pension reform an issue of crucial importance. Governments are deriving inspiration from the Americas, which have forged groundbreaking reforms in this area for decades.

Latin American experiments with pension reform began when Chile converted its public pay-as-you-go system to a system of private individual accounts in the early 1980s. Several other Latin American countries then followed suit, inspired both by Chile's reforms and by World Bank recommendations...