The Brazilian public pension system: Policy changes, political effects

This article discusses the reciprocal relationship between public pension policy and age-based politics in Brazil, a nation with a public pension system that has the potential for influencing policy developments in other developing nations faced with the problem of how to extend social security coverage to the entire population. Our goal is to extend a line of analysis used in previous studies of industrial nations to the case of Brazil. Pension policy changes made during the 1960s and 1970s had a number of unintended consequences. One was the role these policy changes played with respect to the emergence of rural unions and age-based interest groups: both are becoming increasingly important actors with respect to pension policy. We discuss the implications of the Brazilian case for policy options and outcomes in other newly democratic nations, particularly those in Latin America.