Motivating self-employed women to contribute to social security in Bolivia

Journal article

Over 30% of female workers are self-employed across Latin America, often without health insurance and pension benefits. To understand why and explore potential solutions, we conducted a laboratory experiment in Bolivia to assess the efficacy of interventions to influence the behavior of self-employed women. Participants were randomly assigned to one of six groups, receiving either a message on pension benefits, a message on health insurance advantages, or reduced enrollment non-monetary cost for savings or retirement plans. Our findings indicate that informative messages alone were effective in increasing voluntary contributions to experimental pension and health insurance schemes. Reductions in time, physical and cognitive fatigue required for enrollment did not lead to a significant increase of voluntary contributions. Moreover, we found that the effectiveness of these interventions varied depending on the type of worker, with high-effort workers being the most responsive.

Authors: Heller, L; Lopez, R; Nogales, R

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Journal: Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics
• Volume: 120
• Article number: 102498
• Publication date: 2025-12-23
• Acceptance date: 2025-12-03
• DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2025.102498
• EISSN: 2214-8051
• ISSN: 2214-8043
• Language: English
• Keywords: laboratory experiment; self-employment; pension system; health insurance