On the Evolution of Population Preferences toward Retirement System Design and Savings Withdrawal: Evidence from Chile

While the Chilean pension system has served as a prototype for pension system design, it has received significant social and political criticism. The system also endured three rounds of savings withdrawals during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we study evaluations and preferences regarding the Chilean retirement system, and we connect these assessments with the decision to withdraw savings. We compare data from before (2015) and after the social explosion (2019) in Chile, complemented by a 2020 survey of individuals’ decisions and intentions to withdraw savings. Generally, evaluations of the system and pension fund administrators (PFAs) substantially worsened in 2019. However, college-educated individuals significantly increased their evaluations of both in 2019 compared to 2015, while active contributors improved their evaluations of PFAs. A notable result indicates that college-educated public servants were substantially more likely to reduce their preference for a state-funded pillar and substantially less likely to withdraw savings. Individuals with better evaluations of the system and a stronger preference for an individually funded pillar were significantly less likely to withdraw savings.