What we know about the Argentine Social Security (SS) system? How did SS coverage expand? How SS was/is financed? What levels of benefits are being paid? How was/is its institutional organization? What was the impact of demographic and labor market trends on SS? Is there any long term global perspective available? Which are the challenges that future pension policies face in terms of sustainability?

Argentina is a paradigmatic case in the global context due to various aspects of its economic and social development, including setting up a SS system that was modified several times and, at every moment, is the result of decisions, commitments and promises established a long time before.

During the last decades, the pension system in Argentina experienced significant changes that included the introduction of a fully-funded component in 1994 and its subsequent reversal to a pay-as-you-go scheme in 2008. After the 2001 crisis, the favorable fiscal position allowed the implementation of policies that reversed the decline in coverage to unprecedented levels reaching over 90% of the elderly.

This paper analyzes the historical evolution, reviews the main changes in the pension system, and provides updated data in terms of all the most relevant dimensions: scope, adequacy of benefits, funding sources and fiscal commitments.

Besides, the paper summarizes an actuarial evaluation of the Argentine Social Security Administration (ANSES), trying to incorporate the peculiar characteristic of, on one side mixing resources from employees’ and employers’ contributions and taxes from general revenues and, at the same time, being responsible for paying contributive and non- contributive benefits.

Finally, given the fragmentation of a set of programs, a possible pension policy is considered in order to achieve, on sustainable basis, universal coverage, certain minimum guarantees of income security and simultaneously certain proportionality between contributions and benefits.