Costa Rican Social Security in the face of COVID-19: when economic uncertainty is worse than epidemiological uncertainty

Abstract

When the economic uncertainty is worse than the epidemiological one, it raises a series of fundamental questions: What has been the response of the Costa Rican Social Security to the pandemic? What other instruments could be implemented to contain the adverse effects of the crisis? What financing alternatives could be implemented to guarantee the sustainability of the institutionality in the short and medium term? This paper analyzes the response of the Costa Rican State to the crisis and the response of Social Security by describing the response of the Costa Rican State to the pandemic, the analysis of the response of the Costa Rican Social Security with emphasis on instruments of public policy and financing, and through prospective analysis, some other complementary measures are proposed with the intention of improving the sustainability of the post-pandemic welfare institutionality.