2018  - The purpose of this study is to undertake in-depth research on the different bilateral labour agreements and social security agreements in the North Africa sub-region, with particular emphasis on Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco.

worldbank.org (2022) This research analyzes the evolution of maternity and paternity leave across the world, covering 190 countries over 52 years. The data show striking differences both within and between countries in how leave distribution for parents upon the birth of a child has evolved. The study finds that, across all regions, there have been notable increases in the number of leave days a mother can take. The absolute increase in the number of leave days for mothers has been greatest in Europe and Central Asia, followed by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development high-income economies. However, apart from the high-income economies, the number of leave days allocated to fathers has increased by only a fraction of the amount for mothers. An analysis of the correlations between relative leave allocation and women's labor market outcomes suggests that where the disparity in the allocation of leave days is greater, women's participation in the labor market may be lower. However, the study finds no evidence of any association between the gender gap in leave allocation and other labor market outcomes, including the gender wage gap and women's representation at the managerial level.

worldbank.org (2022) As we move into an increasingly digital world, governments across the globe are leveraging new technologies to deliver services better, faster, and more transparently. Globally, over a quarter of adults are receiving payments from the government whether through public sector wages, pensions, sectoral subsidies, or social protection programs, an increase of 400 million from just four years earlier. The increasing scale of these government-to-person (G2P) payments offers a huge opportunity to advance financial inclusion, advance women’s economic empowerment, and promote the development of the digital ecosystem. This report is a reference document to be consulted by governments and those advising policy makers when considering, designing and implementing digital government-to-person (G2P) payments. It provides a framework for a modern G2P architecture which can support long-term development outcomes through the digitalization of G2P payments.

wider.unu.edu (2022) The population structure the world over is going through a demographic shift, and the elderly proportion is projected to increase with population growth. This change is a matter of concern for sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, where the majority of the people are young and the rates of both population growth and unemployment are high. A good pension system provides elderly assistance and is a source of savings for long-term investment. The pension systems in SSA, however, are characterized by low coverage and participation rates, and they therefore fail to guarantee a basic income to the elderly. The contributory nature of most private pension schemes is also not favourable in SSA due to high levels of informality and low levels of income, which limit contributions, and because such schemes do not promote risk-sharing and redistribution. Pension reforms in regions such as Latin America have not been overly successful, and this offers lessons for SSA countries. The pension sector in SSA is characterized by low assets under management, investment in short-term assets (mainly government securities), low returns on investment, and restrictive regulatory frameworks. The way out for SSA is to move towards a targeted universal pension system financed through public resources; however, the shift to such a system should be gradual so as not to lead to fiscal strain.

eurekalert.org (07.12.2022)  The success of longevity interventions is putting countries on paths to becoming aging societies, in which the number of individuals aged 65 and older is equal to the number of people aged 15 and younger. This outcome may lead to resistance to investments in healthy longevity, according to aging experts, if concerns are raised that the needs of older individuals will overwhelm societies, exacerbate ageism, and divide populations. The National Academy of Medicine in the United States addressed this possibility as its first-ever Grand Challenge, and in June 2022 published the Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity, developed by an independent and interdisciplinary global commission co-chaired by Linda P. Fried, MD, MPH, dean of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and John Eu-Li Wong, Isabel Chan Professor in Medical Sciences and senior vice president of health innovation and translation at the National University of Singapore. A commentary in the Dec. 2, 2022  Nature Aging, by Dr. Fried, Dr. Wong, and Victor J. Dzau, MD, president of the National Academy of Medicine, reviews the findings and recommendations of the Global Roadmap.

plos.org (09.12.2022) For Malaysia, a nation highly dependent on migrant labour, the large non-citizen workforce presents a unique health system challenge. Although documented migrant workers are covered by mandatory healthcare insurance (SPIKPA), financial constraints remain a major barrier for non-citizen healthcare access. Malaysia recently extended protection for migrant workers under the national social security scheme (SOCSO), previously exclusive to citizens. This study aims to evaluate healthcare financing and social security policies for migrant workers to identify policy gaps and opportunities for intervention.

fao.org (2022) This paper uncovers the mechanisms shaping the impact of the public work component of the Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on beneficiaries and communities’ food security and vulnerability to various shocks. From a policy perspective, the empirical findings recommend explicitly integrating environmental and climate considerations to design social protection programmes which target poor agricultural households highly vulnerable to weather shocks.

ipe.com (15.11.2022) The German government is targeting a comprehensive reform of all the three pension system pillars during what it considers a turning point in history – Zeitwende – with high inflation, possible recession, changes in economic policies and demographic pressures.

theconversation.com (16.10.2022) Over the last three decades, there has been a proliferation of social protection programs across the Global South in what some have dubbed a development revolution. International development agencies across the ideological spectrum have embraced social protection as an effective and efficient instrument to reduce poverty and inequality.

theprint.in (31.11.2022) Social Protection Open Digital Ecosystems (SP-ODEs) can provide beneficiaries, government and service providers a unified, digital platform to better access welfare schemes.

At COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the Climate Investment Coalition (CIC), in collaboration with the Nordic Council of Ministers, presented key investor recommendations to bridge the climate finance and investment gap by 2030 towards emerging markets and developing economies. This was made alongside an overview of Nordic pension fund progress within climate and clean energy investments in 2022.

The National Pension Commission (PenCom), yesterday revealed that over 84,000 Nigerians have enrolled in the ongoing Micro Pension plan. This was even as the Commission reiterated that it will continue to embark on massive awareness to ensure more Nigerians key into the initiative.

 The New European (10.11.2022) A guide to how pensions are funded across the continent

.worldbank.org (30.09.2022) There is currently a major focus on digitization within African countries, with the interest of, on the one hand, increasing efficiency and lowering the cost-of-service delivery, and on the other hand, increasing financial inclusion for excluded parts of the population. Zambia provides an important case study of digitization of social protection transfers. Whilst Zambia is sparsely populated with remote rural populations often living up to 100 km from the nearest town, making beneficiaries hard to reach with digital services, the country has successfully demonstrated that cash transfers can be digitized for remote rural populations to varying extents, tailored to their particular context. This Discussion Note presents challenges faced and solutions found in digitizing cash transfer payments in Zambia, which may be of interest to other countries embarking on similar endeavors

Windsor Star (02.11.2022) Chile’s President Gabriel Boric on Wednesday announced his long-awaited plan to reform the country’s controversial private pension system.  In a televised address, Boric said he was planning to end Chile’s Pension Fund Administrators (AFP) system in lieu of a new private-public social security system that would see new contributions from employers and the state. “The AFPs, in this reform, are finished,” Boric said, adding that new private entities would still be allowed to invest pension funds, but there will also be a public alternative.

ILO Working paper 82. (Nov 2022)   With the acceleration of population ageing, the achieving of healthy ageing is becoming a global imperative and social protection policies and social security systems have an important role to play in this endeavour.

Government Information Quarterly  (October 2022) Administrative errors in unemployment insurance (UI) decisions give rise to a public values conflict between efficiency and efficacy. We analyze whether artificial intelligence (AI) – in particular, methods in machine learning (ML) – can be used to detect administrative errors in UI claims decisions, both in terms of accuracy and normative tradeoffs. We use 16 years of US Department of Labor audit and policy data on UI claims to analyze the accuracy of 7 different random forest and deep learning models. We further test weighting schemas and synthetic data approaches to correcting imbalances in the training data. A random forest model using gradient descent boosting is more accurate, along several measures, and preferable in terms of public values, than every deep learning model tested. Adjusting model weights produces significant recall improvements for low-n outcomes, at the expense of precision. Synthetic data produces attenuated improvements and drawbacks relative to weights.

aseanbriefing.com (21.10.2022) Singapore has recently announced a new healthcare reform plan that will shift the country’s healthcare strategy towards preventive care. The program is called Healthier SG and aims to provide a family physician and one health plan for every resident. The hope is that family doctors will develop strong relationships with their patients and play a more prominent role in preventive healthcare. The change in strategy comes because Singapore is fast becoming an aging society, with one in four residents aged 65 and above by 2030. Further, the country has also seen a steady increase in chronic disease cases such as hypertension and obesity.

worldbank.org (2022) The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in vast numbers of people in need of social assistance, many of whom were not previously covered by social safety nets. To meet this unprecedented level of need, governments quickly scaled social assistance reaching over 1.7 billion people in low- and middle income countries. Scaling up social assistance presented two separate but related challenges: first, adapting targeting and registration to reach individuals not commonly included in social assistance databases, such as urban informal workers, and second, how to deliver government to person (G2P) payments safely and securely in the context of the pandemic. Countries that could leverage pre-pandemic investments in digital public infrastructure (DPI)— identification (ID), payments and trusted data sharing—were better able to implement COVID-response social assistance programs and reach more beneficiaries. This paper, analyzes the role of these DPIs, also called digital stack, in the social protection response to COVID by analyzing data on howCOVID-response social assistance programs register red and made payments to beneficiaries across178 programs across 85 countries. The analysis shows how these digital systems and infrastructure allowed for innovative targeting, registration, and payment approaches that covered a significantportion of the population. This paper uses administrative data on G2P registration and payment methods combined with anecdotal evidence from country case studies to show how pre-pandemic investments in digital databases, digital ID, and digital payments impacted countries’ abilities to reach new beneficiaries and deliver payments safely in the context of the pandemic response. It further details workaround solutions implemented by countries without these assets and infrastructure in place, and how some countries were able to expand their digital infrastructure even amidst the urgency of the crisis response. The analysis concludes with suggestions as to the impact that the social assistance response to COVID-19 can have on the future of social protection payments, in terms of inspiring investments in building and strengthening G2P ecosystems globally.

worldbank.org (03.10.2022) The COVID-19 crisis highlighted how digital public infrastructure (DPI) can play a critical role for governments to deliver social assistance quickly and safely.  DPI not only allowed governments to reach an unprecedented number of new beneficiaries, it also allowed them to make payments to them remotely. This brought millions of people into the social protection and financial system for the first time. Countries now have the opportunity to learn from, and build on, these experiences to implement G2P (government-to-people) payment ecosystems that are efficient, responsive and inclusive.

Social Security beneficiaries can expect an 8.7% boost to benefits in 2023, the Social Security Administration announced. The increase tops the 5.9% cost-of-living adjustment for 2022, which at the time was the highest in four decades.

The government has approved the details of its new pension auto-enrolment scheme in what Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys described as a “generational reform” of the Irish pensions system. The General Scheme of the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System has now been referred to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection for pre-legislative scrutiny. If passed into law, the scheme will require workers to pay into a voluntary workplace pension scheme, co-funded by their employer and the state on an opt-out rather than an opt-in basis.

vidhilegalpolicy.in (22.09.2022) Many governments now use digital technology for means testing. For instance, the US uses an Income Eligibility Verification System that links several databases to verify beneficiary income. It also uses a Prisoner Verification System linked to prisoners’ databases to exclude prisoners from benefits. In Sweden, municipal personal social services use Robot Process Automation to make some decisions about eligibility.  Automated means testing and other automation of welfare have been on the rise in BRICS countries, helmed in particular by digital identity systems. The following paragraphs take a look at each BRICS country’s digital ID system and its relation to welfare.

IZA (Oct 2022) In response to strong revenue and income losses that a large share of the self-employed faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the impact of this program on the subjective survival probability. In particular, we investigate how the digitalization level of the self-employed influences the program’s effectiveness. Employing propensity score matching, we find that the emergency aid program had only moderately positive effects on the confidence of the self-employed to survive the crisis. However, the self-employed whose businesses were highly digitalized, benefitted much more from the state aid compared to those whose businesses were less digitalized. This holds true only for those self-employed in advanced digitalization stages, who started the digitalization processes already before the crisis. Moreover, taking a regional perspective, we find suggestive evidence that the quality of the regional broadband infrastructure matters in the sense that it increases the effectiveness of the emergency aid program. Our findings show the interplay between governmental support programs, the digitalization levels of entrepreneurs, and the regional digital infrastructure. The study helps public policy to increase the impact of crisis-related policy instruments.

ipcig.org (03.10.2022) COVID-19 has affected all countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and groups already vulnerable before the crisis, such as children, have been particularly affected. Social protection can promote children’s well-being and reduce the negative impacts of crises on them, especially if their needs and vulnerabilities are taken into account. Against this background, the IPC-IG and UNICEF MENARO partnered to analyse the social protection responses to COVID-19 in MENA and assess the extent to which they took children’s needs into account.