Social security in Brazil

Social security in Brazil originated with the 1824 Constitution, more specifically in the so-called "public aid", which was carried out by private initiative through the Santa Casa de Misericórdia. Social security, along with public health and social assistance, is part of social welfare. The Instituto Nacional do Seguro Social (INSS) (National Social Security Institute in English), which is currently responsible for managing social security benefits, was created via Decree No. 99,350 of June 27, 1990, through the merger of the Instituto de Administração Financeira da Previdência e Assistência Social (IAPAS), created in 1977, and the Instituto Nacional de Previdência Social (INPS), created in 1966.

Operation
The Brazilian social security system is part of the social welfare program and is supported by companies that contribute with 20% of the remuneration paid each month to their employees (with an employment contract) and on payments made to contractors without an employment bond. From these 20%, the company deducts 8% to 11% of the worker's pay. Civil servants pay between 11% and 14% of their salary and their employer (the government) pays the same percentage.

In addition, companies also pay taxes to the other areas of social security (health and social assistance) by submitting social contributions, which include: Contribuição para Financiamento da Seguridade Social (COFINS), which is proportional to gross revenue; Programa de Integração Social (PIS), proportional to company revenue; and Contribuição Social sobre o Lucro Líquido (CSLL), proportional to the company's net profit. The amount collected from these payments can only be used for social security and not for other purposes. Despite this, social security's only source of funds comes from contributions deducted from the salaries and payrolls of companies or the government, since social contributions finance health and social assistance, and not social security itself.

According to the 1988 Constitution, the budgets of the federal government, the states, the Federal District, and the municipalities must include funds for social security.

Brazil uses the solidarity welfare model, which means that beneficiaries are funded by active workers. They, in turn, when retired, will be funded by the next generation of active workers, and so on. Due to a demographic imbalance resulting from the accentuated increase in the elderly population, there has been a need to reform the social security system, which is allegedly in deficit due to the difference between the amount collected and the benefits granted, forcing the government to withdraw resources from other areas, such as health and social assistance, in order to compensate. In addition, as the population's life expectancy rises, the number of inactive people tends to increase more than the number of active people. The reform would be an attempt to rectify the government's fiscal imbalance, since social security consumes a large part of the federal government's primary spending, causing inflation and low economic growth. In the last 30 years, the country has undergone three welfare reforms.

There are two main public schemes: the Regimes Próprios de Previdência Social ("Social Security Schemes"), which are aimed at permanent civil servants and are set up by the federal government, states, Federal District and municipalities, and the Regime Geral de Previdência Social ("General Social Security System"), which is aimed at other workers. The public welfare systems are compulsory for all citizens who work for pay. The Brazilian system also includes private or complementary social security.

Background
In 1795, the Plano de Benefícios dos Órfãos e Viúvas dos Oficiais da Marinha ("Benefit Plan for Orphans and Widows of Naval Officers") was created with the aim of protecting the dependents of naval officers against the risk of death. In 1808, the Mount of Piety of the Personal Guard of King João VI was established and, in 1835, the General Mount of Piety of State Employees.

In 1821, Prince Pedro de Alcântara decreed that masters and teachers who reached thirty years of service would be granted a pension, with an allowance of a quarter of their income for those who continued to work when they had completed their service. In 1888, the right to retirement for postal workers was regulated. The 1891 Constitution included pensions for civil servants in the case of disability, but did not include other categories of workers.

Early 20th century
Law No. 3.724/1919 established accident insurance, which made it compulsory for employers to pay compensation.

Social security in Brazil developed with the Eloy Chaves Law of 1923, which created the Caixas de Aposentadorias e Pensões (CAPs) ("Retirement and Pension Funds") for railroad workers, financed by companies, employees and railroad fares. The law allowed for the creation of CAPs for other categories, such as dockers and seafarers (Law No. 5.129/1926) and the staff of telegraph and radio-telegraph service companies (Law No. 5.485/1928). The CAPs operated on a capitalization basis, but they were structurally fragile since they had a small number of contributors and followed demographic assumptions with dubious parameters; another weak aspect was the high number of frauds in the granting of benefits.

In 1930, Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas suspended CAP pensions for six months and promoted a restructuring that ended up replacing them with Retirement and Pension Institutes (IAPs), which were national authorities centralized in the federal government. Affiliation began to be based on professional categories, unlike the CAP model, which was organized by company.

Over the following years, the following institutes would emerge:


 * 1933 - IAPM - Instituto de Aposentadoria e Pensões dos Marítimos (Decree No. 22.872, of June 29, 1933);
 * 1934 - IAPC - Instituto de Aposentadoria e Pensões dos Comerciários (Decree No. 24.272, of May 21, 1934);
 * 1934 - IAPB - Bankers' Pension and Retirement Institute (Decree No. 24.615, of July 9, 1934);
 * 1936 - IAPI - Instituto de Aposentadoria e Pensões dos Bancários (Law No. 367, of December 31, 1936);
 * 1938 - IPASE - Instituto de Aposentadoria e Pensões dos Industriários (Decree-Law No. 288 of February 23, 1938);
 * 1938 - IAPETC - Instituto de Pensões e Assistência dos Servidores do Estado (Decree-Law No. 651, of August 26, 1938);
 * 1939 - IAPOE - Instituto de Aposentadoria e Pensões dos Empregados em Transportes e Cargas (Decree-Law No. 1.355, of June 19, 1939);
 * 1945 - ISS - Instituto de Serviços Sociais do Brasil (Decree No. 7.526, of May 7, 1945);
 * 1945 - IAPETEC - Decree-Law No. 7,720, of July 9, 1945, incorporated the Instituto dos Empregados em Transportes e Cargas da Estiva and renamed it Instituto de Aposentadoria e Pensões dos Estivadores e Transportes de Cargas;
 * 1953 - CAPFESP - Caixa de Aposentadoria e Pensões dos Ferroviários e Empregados em Serviços Públicos (Decree no. 34.586, of November 12, 1953);
 * 1960 - IAPFESP - Instituto de Aposentadoria e Pensões dos Ferroviários e Empregados em Serviços Públicos (Law no. 3.807, of August 26, 1960, art. 176 - CAPFESP extinct).

The 1934 Constitution established a triple form of funding, based on contributions from the employee, the employer and the state. The 1946 Constitution mentions social security, systematizing social protection rules against death, illness, disability and old age.

The remaining CAPs were transformed into a national fund through Decree 34.596/1953. Law No. 3.807/1960 (Lei Orgânica da Previdência Social - LOPS, "Organic Law of Social Security") unified the social security legislation.

In 1964, a commission was formed to reformulate the social security system, which culminated in the merger of all the IAPs into the Instituto Nacional do Seguro Social (INPS) ("National Social Security Institute"), created by Eloah Bosny in 1966, through Article 1 of Decree-Law 72 of 1966.

Complementary Law 11/1971 instituted FUNRURAL, guaranteeing rural workers access to social security rights. In 1974, Dataprev was founded. In 1977, the Sistema Nacional de Previdência e Assistência Social (SINPAS) ("National Welfare and Social Assistance System") was established and was composed ofː


 * Instituto de Administração Financeira da Previdência e Assistência Social (IAPAS) ("Institute for the Financial Administration of Social Security and Assistance");
 * Instituto Nacional de Assistência Médica da Previdência Social (INAMPS) ("National Social Security Medical Assistance Institute");
 * Legião Brasileira de Assistência (LBA) ("Brazilian Assistance Legion");
 * Fundação de Bem-Estar do Menor (FUNABEM) ("Foundation for the Welfare of Minors");
 * Central de Medicamentos (CEME) ("Medicines Center");
 * Empresa de Processamento de Dados da Previdência Social (DATAPREV) ("Social Security Data Processing Company");
 * Instituto Nacional da Previdência Social (INPS) ("National Social Security Institute");

The LOPS was replaced by the Consolidação das Leis da Previdência Social (CLPS) in 1976.

1988 Constitution
The 1988 Brazilian Constitution established social security, based on the health, welfare and the social assistance tripod, covering pensions, sickness and child benefit, maternity pay, prison allowance, the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS), among other workers' rights. Article 195 of the document states: Art. 195. Social security shall be financed by society as a whole, directly and indirectly, under the terms of the law, through resources from the budgets of the Union, the States, the Federal District and the Municipalities, and from the following social contributions:

I - employers, levied on payroll, turnover and profit;

II - from workers;

III - on revenue from betting contests. Since then, the Brazilian social security system has been characterized by a distribution method. However, problems relating to the system's deficit have been pointed out repeatedly over the years. Since the enactment of the 1988 Constitution, there have been three proposed constitutional amendments aimed at reforming the country's pension system. Out of 44 countries assessed by French investor Natixis in 2021, Brazil was ranked 43rd in the Global Retirement Index (GRI).

In 1990, SIMPAS was abolished. Law 8.029/1990 created the Instituto Nacional do Seguro Social, incorporating INPS and IAPAS. INAMPS, which operated alongside INPS, was abolished and its services began to be covered by SUS. Law 8.213/1991 established the Social Security Benefit Plans (PBPC), repealing the CLPS. Law 8.212/1991 established the Funding Plan. Social assistance is now regulated by Law 8.742/1993 (Lei Orgânica da Assistência Social- LOAS).

PEC No. 20 of 1998
In 1998, the federal government changed the social security rules with the Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PEC in Portuguese) No. 20, which stipulated a minimum age for retirement: 55 for women and 60 for men. Until then, retirement was valid for those who contributed for 25 to 30 years in the case of women, and 30 to 35 years in the case of men, but with no minimum age limit. The PEC also created the Fator Previdenciário na Emenda Constitucional nº 20/98 ("Social Security Factor", contained in Law 9.876/99), which amended provisions of Laws 8.212 and 8.213/91; as well as a transition rule for those already contributing to the system before the amendment was approved.

PEC No. 40 of 2003
PEC No. 40 aimed to determine the contribution criteria for inactive civil servants in the country, and to establish the basis for calculating retirement pensions. It abolishes the transitional rules for voluntary retirement, with the exception of the option to reduce the amount for each year of anticipation. Civil servants who have already retired, or who have the so-called acquired right (who meet the conditions to request retirement, but prefer to continue working), have been guaranteed full and equal benefits in the reform. The other civil servants, who have no vested rights but entered the service before the proposal was approved and enacted, can receive full benefits (retirement equal to their last active salary) and parity (the same adjustments as for active civil servants), but to do so they must meet five requirements: men must be 60 years old, have 35 years of contributions, 20 years of public service, 10 years of career and 5 years in their last position; women must be 55 years old and have 30 years of contributions, in addition to the other three requirements. If they fail to meet all the requirements, then their pensions will be calculated by the average of the salaries received throughout their working lives, which will result in a benefit that is necessarily lower than the last salary received while working (the highest ever received).

Civil servants who join the public sector after the reform is enacted will never have full and equal pensions. For them, the reform provides for a cap of the same amount as that paid by the INSS as the maximum retirement amount in the private sector, currently R$7,507.49. Those who want to earn more will have to contribute to supplementary pension funds. However, as this cap was only regulated in 2013, it only came into force from that date - more specifically from March of that year - and only for federal civil servants (the obligation for states and municipalities, with their own pension schemes, to create their own supplementary pension schemes was only determined by the reform made in 2019, under the Bolsonaro government).

This reform was contested years later, due to the circumstances of the mensalão scandal, in which it was questioned whether the approval of this PEC would be linked to the bribes received by the parliamentarians accused in this scandal.

PEC No. 287 of 2016
At the end of 2016, the Michel Temer government sent a social security reform proposal to the National Congress, which was filed in the Chamber of Deputies as PEC 287/2016. It modified the retirement rules, due to the population's average life expectancy, the trend towards a reduction in the working-age population, among other aspects. PEC 287 proposed that everyone - except the military (who were not included in this proposal) - would have the same retirement rules: private sector workers, politicians and civil servants, including high-ranking civil servants from the Union, states and municipalities, would retire at 65 (men) and 62 (women), with the value of the benefit limited to the INSS cap (R$ 5531), as well as increasing the contribution time to 40 years for workers to receive a full pension (the maximum value of which, in 2017, is R$ 5,531.31). 531.31). The minimum contribution time to social security would increase by 67% for civil servants, from 15 to 25 years, but was kept at 15 years for private sector workers.

In February 2018, the Michel Temer government officially announced that it was suspending the processing of PEC 287/2016, due to the fourteen-month impasse with parliamentarians and the bad repercussions of the government's idea to temporarily suspend the federal intervention in Rio de Janeiro in order to vote on and enact the reform, since the Constitution prevents changes to the text during periods of federal intercession.

PEC No. 6 de 2019
On February 20, President Jair Bolsonaro delivered to Congress the reform proposal drawn up by the Ministry of Economy team, headed by Paulo Guedes. One of the fundamental points of the reform is the proposed transition from the current distribution system to a capitalization system. In the distribution system, workers who contribute to the social security system are actually paying for the retirement of those who are already retired. In the capitalization system, each worker will be responsible for contributing to their own pension, in a way, like a savings account, which would be managed by public and private entities of the worker's choice. Paulo Guedes has mirrored the Chilean pension model, in which the money is managed by private companies which, in turn, can invest in the financial market.

The social security reform proposal was filed in the Chamber of Deputies as PEC 6/2019, approved in April of the same year in the Comissão de Constituição e Justiça e de Cidadania (CCJ) (Constitution and Justice and Citizenship Committee). In the Federal Senate, the proposal was definitively approved on October 23, 2019. Senator Tasso Jereissati was the rapporteur for the proposed constitutional amendment in the Senate's CCJ. The text was promulgated as a Constitutional Amendment on November 12, 2019. The matter was the 103rd amendment to the 1988 Constitution.

According to economists, public coffers are expected to save R$800 billion in the first 10 years after the proposal is enacted.