on formal sector workers and only seldom t h e y provide non-
contributory pensions to informal sector workers and their families.
Furthermore, CEPAL (2005) suggests that the incidence of such
expenditure is becoming more progressive, though at different
speeds across the region, as shown by the increase in enrolments in
secondary education, greater access to health services, social
assistance and anti-poverty programs (see below).
Table 6. Incidence of government expenditure by quintile (18 countries over
selected years, 1997-2004) and concentration coefficients of public
expenditure by country subgroups
Source: Elaboration on CEPAL (2007a); Note: Group 1 includes Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru; Group 2: Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico,
Panama, Venezuela; Group 3: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay.
As shown in Table 6 , social security expenditure is not
progressive, as it mainly covers formal sector workers with stable
employment. This raises the question of how can governments
best expand social security coverage, whether by actively
extending the formal s ector, or by setting up solidarity-based,
non-contributory, universal or targeted funds to provide basic
benefits to informal sector workers and their families. Bo t h
a pp r oach e s we re f ol lo wed in recent years, though the latter
has been more common. For instance, several LOC countries
introduced non-contributory social pensions to start addressing this
problem (Table 7).