Economics focus: More than a notional improvement

摘要

In the less-than-cool world of public pensions, new trends come along infrequently. For much of the past 25 years, most discussion of state pensions has been about funding: getting today's workers to save now in order to pay for their own retirement later. Systems in many countries have moved from pay-as-you-go financing, in which today's workers pay for today's pensions, towards individual accounts in which workers accumulate their own cash. With Chile leading the way in 1981, this system has proved especially popular in Latin America. Workers in a dozen countries there now make mandatory contributions to their personal nest eggs.