The construction of social protection systems in Latin America has been profoundly influenced by the minimalist approach that many governments adopted after the 1982 debt crisis, and that translated into a decrease in the producing and regulating role of the State, as well as of public social investment. However, with the return to democracy, governments increased social investment and began to implement innovative social development and protection public polices oriented to lowering the high levels of poverty and inequality. In particular, these new trends on public policies are interesting evidence about how the idea of universalization is being growingly attractive to governments and are the main drivers of policy reforms. This article also discuses on different proposals of welfare regimes typologies in the region, based by the contributions of Barrientos (2004), Martínez-Franzoni (2008), and Cecchini, Filgueira and Robles (2014). These scholars classify Latin American countries according to their different welfare gaps, allowing the comparison and better understanding national social protection systems on the basis of different factors, such as societies’ capacity to generate incomes through the labour market and the capacity of governments to provide protection to those persons with insufficient incomes. Then, the article presents a literature review of the concept of universalism, based on the contributions of Anttonen (2002), Kildal and Kuhnle (2005), Anttonen et.al (2012), Anttonen and Sipilä (2014), Martínez-Franzoni and Sánchez-Ancochea (2014; 2016), Filgueira (2006; 2014), and Pribble (2013), and how it is having a practical impact on the design and implementation of new policies targeted to strengthen social protection systems, specially on pensions to improve the achievement of economic security in elderly. Finally, the article attempts to establish the main characteristics and challenges for Latin American social protection systems on the incorporation of universalistic approaches on the recent pension reforms in the region.
