This section presents evidence on the expenditures on social protection and social benefits.
Social protection expenditures are government expenditures that provide support to households who find themselves in circumstances that adversely affect their welfare.
Social protection benefits include cash benefits (such as pensions, income support and social assistance payments), social services (such as childcare, care for the elderly and persons with disabilities), and tax breaks with a social purpose (such as fiscal support for families with children and favourable tax treatment of contributions to private health plans).
The next graph presents the evolution of total and per-capita social social protection benefits and shows the breakdown into eight categories:
Healthcare
Disability
Old age benefits (pensions and other goods and services, except medical care)
Survivors’ benefits
Family/children benefits
Unemployment
Housing
Social exclusion benefits
Pensions are the biggest item among social protection benefits.
The next graph presents the total annual expenditures on pensions, broken down by different types of pensions (old age, survivors, disability, early retirement benefit).
The next graph shows the evolution of the number of pension recipients, in total and by the number of recipients of different types of pensions (old age, survivors, disability, early retirement benefit).
The Unified Pension Control and Payments System publishes monthly and very detailed information on pension expenditures and recipients.
The next graph shows the evolution of the mean and median pension income. This is the income of the average pensioner from all of the pensions that he/she might be receiving.
The next graph shows the distribution of pensioners by their age groups.
The next graph presents the pension expenditures that are allocated to each age group of pensioners.
The next graph presents the pension expenditures that are allocated to each type of pension.