Barriers to Pension Affiliation in Bolivia: Evidence on Accessibility, Affordability, and Acceptability

This paper uses a multidimensional framework that incorporates constraints of accessibility, affordability, and acceptability to examine the determinants of effective access to the contributory component of Bolivia’s pension system. Using nationally representative household surveys from 2005 and 2019, we evaluate the influence of labor-market segmentation, financial capacity, informational barriers, and sociocultural factors on workers’ likelihood of affiliation. To address key empirical challenges, including nonlinearity, non-random selection into employment, and perfect or near-perfect prediction, we estimate Probit, Heckprobit, and Firth–Logit models and compute gender-specific average marginal effects. The results indicate persistent structural barriers across periods and settings. Self-employment, unpaid work, and low or unstable earnings consistently reduce affiliation. Informational constraints and distrust were decisive in 2005, while digital access became a critical determinant by 2019. Sociocultural factors, particularly Indigenous identity, also emerged as significant acceptability constraints in the later period. Gender differences in affiliation mainly reflect disparities in employment status, income, and access to information, rather than heterogeneous behavioral responses. Overall, the findings underscore the need for integrated policies that address informational gaps, financial constraints, and labor-market segmentation to bolster access to the contributory component of Bolivia’s pension system.