This article analyses the role of the public sector in providing social insurance and assistance to the elderly in Argentina between the late nineteenth century and the present day. It assesses the extent to which this involvement embodied clear-cut development paradigms or was driven by political pressures. Between the 1940s and 1970s the public sector enjoyed a monopoly of insurance and assistance provision, with the private and voluntary sectors largely excluded. These monopolies failed to provide satisfactory levels of a welfare and proved financially unsustainable. By the 1980s a gradual process of pluralisation had begun, which culminated with the partial privatisation of social insurance in 1994.