This research note offers a revision of !he structural pension reforms that took place in Latin America from 1980 to 2002 and of the main institutional and political explanations of why these countries adopted such dissimilar reform strategies. The revision analyzes !he eligibility rules, levels of benefits, and structure of
old age, disability and survivability of contributory pension programs. Moreover, it examines !he main variables that !he political science literature identifies when explaining this variation: regime type, !he pressure of international financia! institutions, !he distribution of governmental authority, !he ideological
positions of the relevan! political actors, and the role of veto players.