Families with a woman head of household working outside the home are termed single-person households of economically active adults (Arriagada, 2007). Even though several countries in the region have progressed with social protection policies designed to meet this demand, the future scenario is complicated by the higher cost of providing older adults with social protection for an ever greater number of years as life expectancy increases and by greater diversity, particularly in the areas of health, care and recreation. It is therefore vital to take advantage of this window of opportunity opened by the demographic dividend to establish adequate protection provision in the coming decades (see box IV.4).