Gender pension gaps in a private retirement accounts system: A dynamic model of household labor supply and savings

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic model of individuals’ and couples’ labor supply, savings, and retirement decisions to analyze how the design of Chile’s privatized pension system and a reform undertaken in 2008 affect gender pension gaps and old-age poverty. Chile has one of the longest-running private retirements accounts systems in the world, which has served as a model for many countries. The paper estimates the dynamic model using pre-reform data and compares the model’s short-term forecasts with reduced form estimates of the reform’s causal impacts. The model provides accurate forecasts, so it is used to evaluate how actual and counterfactual changes in the pension system design affect men’s and women’s labor supply and savings decisions, pension receipts, and program costs over a longer time horizon. The results show that three design features significantly reduce gender pension gaps: expanding minimum pension benefit eligibility, providing a per-child pension bonus, and increasing women’s retirement age to be equal to men’s. Overall, the 2008 pension reform largely achieved its goals of reducing gender gaps and old age poverty, although the new system costs double that of the old system.