that they first contributed to the social security system. They were then asked to estimate the total period in years and months they had failed to contribute for whatever reason - inactivity, unemployment, employment without a contract, self employment - since they started. I constructed the variable "contribution density" by first calculating respondents' history of contributions in months, and dividing this by their number of months in the labor force, using Mincer's (1974) formula for labor market experience: (age - years of education - five).

In Figure 2, the sample of affiliated men and women is divided into deciles by their contribution density. Taking eligibility for the minimum pension guaranteed by the government as a measure of minimum level of coverage offered under the (contributory) old age income security system, I divided the required months of contribution for the guaranteed benefit (240, or 20 years) by the average number of working months for men and women. The resulting share is the "contribution density threshold" that affiliates must cross to qualify for the minimum pension guarantee (the bold, horizontal axis in each graph). Assuming that workers will maintain their reported rate of contribution to the system, affiliates whose contribution density places them above the threshold will qualify for (at least) the minimum level of cover, while those below will not. It is immediately apparent that a larger share of affiliated women - about half - lies below the threshold of contributions necessary to be covered. However, many of these women may be entitled to some benefit through the current and past contributions of a husband. What is particularly worrying is that 30% of affiliated men are unlikely to qualify for the minimum contributory benefit.

The PRIESO survey includes a wide range of questions about informal instruments to mitigate poverty in old age, and how these might substitute or complement the formal pension system. In addition to questions as to whether respondents gave (received) help in-kind or in cash to (from) family and friends outside the household (in Table 3, GIVES and GETS); the number of children respondents had and/or intended to have (EXKIDS); and how much they spend on their children's education every month (LEDKIDS); two questions were posed to capture whether parents expected their children to care for them in their old age and in what way.<sup>36</sup> The responses to these questions are tabulated by the number of children reported by the respondent, and presented separately for those living in urban and rural areas in Tables 5 and 6. Readers will note that these questions were posed even to individuals who did not have children at the time of the survey.

> 35 Cox-Edwards (2000) uses cross-section survey data to estimate longitudinal patterns of contributory behavior and wages. Because information on years of contributions were previously unavailable, CoxEdwards is forced to create synthetic cohorts to estimate years of contributions. She finds that men typically accumulate forty years worth of contributions from the age of 16 - 65. Women tend to have more interruptions especially the ones with lower levels of education.

361 am indebted to John Hoddinott for many of the questions appearing in this module of the PRIESO, and to Ana Maria Arriagada for pointing out that Chileans' expectations of sons were likely to be very different from their expectations of daughters.

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