IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0184353.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financial forecasts accuracy in Brazil’s social security system

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Patrick Alves da Silva
  • Claudio Alberto Castelo Branco Puty
  • Marcelino Silva da Silva
  • Solon Venâncio de Carvalho
  • Carlos Renato Lisboa Francês

Abstract

Long-term social security statistical forecasts produced and disseminated by the Brazilian government aim to provide accurate results that would serve as background information for optimal policy decisions. These forecasts are being used as support for the government’s proposed pension reform that plans to radically change the Brazilian Constitution insofar as Social Security is concerned. However, the reliability of official results is uncertain since no systematic evaluation of these forecasts has ever been published by the Brazilian government or anyone else. This paper aims to present a study of the accuracy and methodology of the instruments used by the Brazilian government to carry out long-term actuarial forecasts. We base our research on an empirical and probabilistic analysis of the official models. Our empirical analysis shows that the long-term Social Security forecasts are systematically biased in the short term and have significant errors that render them meaningless in the long run. Moreover, the low level of transparency in the methods impaired the replication of results published by the Brazilian Government and the use of outdated data compromises forecast results. In the theoretical analysis, based on a mathematical modeling approach, we discuss the complexity and limitations of the macroeconomic forecast through the computation of confidence intervals. We demonstrate the problems related to error measurement inherent to any forecasting process. We then extend this exercise to the computation of confidence intervals for Social Security forecasts. This mathematical exercise raises questions about the degree of reliability of the Social Security forecasts.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Patrick Alves da Silva & Claudio Alberto Castelo Branco Puty & Marcelino Silva da Silva & Solon Venâncio de Carvalho & Carlos Renato Lisboa Francês, 2017. "Financial forecasts accuracy in Brazil’s social security system," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-20, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0184353
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0184353
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184353
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184353&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0184353?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kashin, Konstantin & King, Gary & Soneji, Samir, 2015. "Explaining Systematic Bias and Nontransparency in U.S. Social Security Administration Forecasts," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(3), pages 336-362, July.
    2. Thomas I. Palley, 1998. "The Economics of Social Security: An Old Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 93-110, September.
    3. Konstantin Kashin & Gary King & Samir Soneji, 2015. "Systematic Bias and Nontransparency in US Social Security Administration Forecasts," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(2), pages 239-258, Spring.
    4. Thomas R. Michl & Duncan K. Foley, 2004. "Social security in a Classical growth model," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 28(1), pages 1-20, January.
    5. Sergio Cesaratto, 2002. "The Economics of Pensions: A non-conventional approach," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 149-177.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Filipe Costa Souza & Wilton Bernardino & Silvio C. Patricio, 2024. "How life-table right-censoring affected the Brazilian social security factor: an application of the gamma-Gompertz-Makeham model," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 1-38, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Li Tan & Cory Koedel, 2019. "The Effects of Differential Income Replacement and Mortality on U.S. Social Security Redistribution," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(2), pages 613-637, October.
    2. Alesina, A. & Passalacqua, A., 2016. "The Political Economy of Government Debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2599-2651, Elsevier.
    3. Kajal Lahiri & Jianting Hu, 2021. "Productive efficiency in processing social security disability claims: a look back at the 1989–95 surge," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 419-457, January.
    4. Kajal Lahiri & Junyan Zhang & Yongchen Zhao, 2023. "Inefficiency in social security trust funds forecasts," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(10), pages 1353-1357, June.
    5. Codrina Rada, 2012. "The Economics of Pensions. Remarks on Growth, Distribution and Class Conflict," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2012_02, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    6. Magali Barbieri, 2018. "Investigating the Difference in Mortality Estimates between the Social Security Administration Trustees' Report and the Human Mortality Database," Working Papers wp394, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    7. Codrina Rada, 2009. "Introducing Demographic Changes in a Model of Economic Growth and Income Distribution," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2009_01, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    8. Rishabh Kumar, 2015. "Wealth accumulation and aggregate demand stagnation in a two class economy with applications to the United States," Working Papers 1526, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
    9. Kazuhiro Kurose, 2022. "A two-class economy from the multi-sectoral perspective: the controversy between Pasinetti and Meade–Hahn–Samuelson–Modigliani revisited," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 239-270, April.
    10. Marangos, John, 2006. "Developing a civilised society in transition economies: The Post Keynesian paradigm," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 660-681, August.
    11. Jackson, William A., 2001. "Age, Health and Medical Expenditure," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 195-218.
    12. Thomas I. Palley, 2018. "Re-theorizing the welfare state and the political economy of neoliberalism's war against it," FMM Working Paper 16-2018, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    13. Thomas Michl, 2010. "Discounting Nordhaus," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 535-549.
    14. Luca Zamparelli, 2017. "Wealth Distribution, Elasticity of Substitution and Piketty: An ‘Anti-Dual’ Pasinetti Economy," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(4), pages 927-946, November.
    15. Marcella Corsi; Carlo D’Ippoliti, 2016. "Le pensioni tra efficienza economica e giustizia sociale: un connubio possibile (The pensions system between economic efficiency and social justice: A possible mix)," Moneta e Credito, Economia civile, vol. 69(274), pages 227-250.
    16. William Jackson, 2006. "Post-Fordism and Population Ageing," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(4), pages 449-467.
    17. Linus Mattauch & Ottmar Edenhofer & David Klenert & Sophie Bénard, 2014. "Public Investment when Capital is Back - Distributional Effects of Heterogeneous Saving Behavior," CESifo Working Paper Series 4714, CESifo.
    18. Bermejo Patón, Fernando & Febrero Paños, Eladio & Uxó González, Jorge, 2015. "La sostenibilidad del sistema español de pensiones: Una aproximación alternativa/Sustainability of the Spanish Pension System: An Alternative View," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 33, pages 783-800, Septiembr.
    19. Daniele Tavani, 2013. "Bargaining over productivity and wages when technical change is induced: implications for growth, distribution, and employment," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 207-244, July.
    20. Sasaki, Hiroaki, 2018. "Capital Accumulation and the Rate of Profit in a Two-Class Economy with Optimization Behavior," MPRA Paper 88362, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0184353. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.