Eficacia y eficiencia de la seguridad social en relacion con el ciclo económico: El caso Perúano / Effectiveness and efficiency of social security in relation to the economic cycle: The Perúvian case

ABSTRACT

There is a belief that in Latin América Social Security behaves anti-cyclically and that therefore in times of crisis it has an automatic stabilizing effect because it protects workers in the more vulnerable sectors against loss of employment and reduction in their real wage. In Perú, however, since social security income is what determines the system's productive and distributive capacity, it is directly affected by fluctuations in the economic cycle. Therefore, in that country, it is not the automatic stabilizer that theory would suggest; on the contrary, social security production tends to decline in times of recesion and to increase in periods of recovery and boom. This article considers the effectiveness and efficiency of the social security system by means of a classification of its productive functions, and the economic cycle is integrated into the analysis of the system's operation. The empirical analysis presented here leads to the conclusion that production and therefore the distribute effect of social security on the real wage is actually procyclical in Perú. The effect is greater in times of economic recovery and boom and diminishes during recessions, which accentuates the effect of the economic cycle on the worker and his family. This is due basically to the income generation model of the Perúvian Institute of Social Security, which pedends entirely on the economic cycle and to