Executive summary .-- Introduction .-- I. The principles of social protection according to ECLAC, as a point of departure for the analysis to be undertaken .-- II. The fairness and rationale of the public-private mixes on social protection .-- III. The legitimacy of social protection systems: determinants of a favourable or negative public attitude .-- IV. The contributory pensions system in Chile is increasingly criticized as lacking democratic legitimacy and as failing to meet its primary objective .-- V. The contributory pension system administered by the AFP is losing its political legitimacy .-- VI. Some stylized facts on pensions in Chile, from a joint vision of contributory and non-contributory subsystems .-- VII. The great debate: low replacement rates for individually capitalized pensions, their determinants, and some of their collateral effects .-- VIII. Given the failure to fulfil the promises of pension coverage and quality, the State AFP could represent a strategy of gradual change through layering and transition .-- IX. Toward a not-for-profit contributory system of individual accounts .-- X. In the face of demographic shifts and the inadequacy of parametric changes: interactions with care provisions as the framework for social protection policies .-- XI. Corollary: the need for action against a pension system with distorted objectives.