timesnownews.com (11.07.2022) With Europe having the highest ageing population and Africa becoming the land of the youngest people, a rapidly escalating older population can collapse economies and exhaust healthcare systems.

Pension Policy International (14.07.2022) The calls come as the government publishes its response to a consultation which gathered feedback from industry, potential providers, consumer groups and future users on what data should be included and how this should be displayed to people. Bringing pensions into the digital age, dashboards will allow savers to see what they have in their various pensions – including their State Pension – in a single place online, at any time they choose.

worldbank.org (2022) Is Coronavirus (Covid-19) a “game changer” for cash transfers? This tantalizing question has animated a large body of recent literature and over 60 virtual panels. This paper offers some clues to address the question by bringing together data, evaluations and practical experiences generated over the course of the pandemic. In particular, the paper flashes out differences between Covid-19 and other crises; it lays out an anatomy of global responses and offers novel data analysis around stylized international trends; synthesizes fresh empirical evidence on response effectiveness based on over 40 evaluations; discusses country-level operational practices as emerging from an array of high and lower-income contexts; and distills key insights with possible future implications.

blogs.worldbank.org (13.07.2022) Over the past 30 months we have been carefully tracking countries’ unprecedented social protection responses to Covid-19. But what are we learning from such wealth of experiences?  A new paper – Cash Transfers in Pandemic Times: Evidence, Practices, and Implications from the Largest Scale Up in History – combines analysis of large datasets with a review of about 300 pandemic papers, evaluations, and practical experiences while focusing on a particular form of social protection – cash transfers. Before turning to the ten lessons for the future featured in the report, let’s first reflect on the past. 

ifpri.org (2022) Numerous studies that draw extensively on rigorous impact evaluations have documented substantial short-term impacts of social protection programs, especially cash and in-kind social assistance, on food security and asset formation, as well as on education, health, and dietary diversity. However, evidence on the impact of social protection systems designed to sustainably reduce poverty by responding to large-scale shocks is more limited. 

nature.com (22.06.2022) In 2012, the government of Niger began giving some of its poorest citizens free money. Over the next few years, around 100,000 participating households received 24 monthly payments of roughly US$16 — which more than doubled their typical spending power. The programme was based on decades of evidence from carefully controlled trials, suggesting that simple cash infusions can transform lives. And Niger is not alone: cash transfers have become a popular tool as governments try to alleviate poverty.

ilo.org (June 2022) This regional companion report is intended to complement the ILO’s World Social Protection Report 2020–22. It includes a section summarizing the status of social protection worldwide, followed by a section highlighting key social protection developments, challenges and priorities for this region from a life-cycle perspective.

 (June 2022) In 2021, The Hamilton Project has been doing a deep dive into social insurance in the United States. Our capstone analysis shows that social insurance plays a critical role for workers and families – both in times of crisis, as exhibited by the pandemic and ensuing economic recession, and in normal economic times. The social insurance system also helps buffer the economy when growth falters, supporting consumer purchasing power when income growth is weak. 
To aid policymakers as they shift focus from providing immediate relief to building back the economy for the long term, we explore the role of social insurance and highlight policy proposals for reforms that would make vital and lasting improvements to the U.S. social insurance system.

Asian Development Bank (June 2022) The report, part of a GIZ-ADB collaboration, reviews trends in social protection and recent pandemic responses. It discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) tools can fit into the social protection delivery chain. It reviews the functioning of the delivery chain during the pandemic to identify gaps in social protection systems along with emerging solutions that draw on digital technology. The report includes four case studies and suggests steps policymakers could take to foster an enabling environment for the use of AI in social protection.

ILO news (21.06.2022) The Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh is celebrating the establishment of the country’s first ever pilot of a social security scheme working on income protection and medical care for work-related injuries. The EIS covers all ready-made garment (RMG) workers. It will compensate injured workers and dependants in case of accidents which lead to permanent disability or death.

Center for Global Development (09.06.2022) Does channeling government-to-person (G2P) payments through bank accounts encourage financial inclusion and use? This paper explores the factors that have driven the adoption of digital payments in India by beneficiaries of PMGKY, the large-scale COVID-19 relief program launched in May 2020. India’s 2013 move to pay social benefits through direct transfers into bank accounts significantly increased account ownership, but uptake of digital payments has been slower, although it has accelerated more recently through smartphone-based apps.

Pension Policy International  (16.06.2022) In order to seamlessly process, track and disburse pensions, the Department of Pension and Pensioners’ Welfare will soon launch an Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled the common portal for the benefit of pensioners and elderly citizens. Union Minister Jitendra Singh said that the AI-supported portal, ‘Bhavishya’, will send automatic alerts to pensioners and superannuated senior citizens, including retired paramilitary personnel.

ZEF Discussion Paper (2022) This paper examines whether social protection – in the form of existing social assistance programmes – affects measures of household well-being such as poverty, food security and costly risk-coping behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using primary data from nationally representative, in-person surveys in Kenya allows the exploration of the impacts of major social assistance programmes. Our analysis employs the doubly robust difference-in-differences approach to estimate the impacts of social assistance programmes on common measures of household welfare. We find that social assistance programmes significantly reduce the prevalence of economic shocks and the further impoverishment of beneficiaries during the pandemic. Furthermore, households with social assistance coverage are less likely to sell assets as a coping strategy. Overall, the results suggest that, during a systematic crisis such as a pandemic, pre-existing social assistance schemes can deliver positive impacts in line with the primary goals of social safety nets and prevent households from falling deeper into poverty by preserving their asset base.

worldbank.org (16.05.2022) Having celebrated International Day of Families on May 15, it is now a great opportunity to reflect on the existing frameworks that support working parents at home and at work. Paid family leave has been a main area of reform in the past few years, as a significant number of countries have passed laws providing parents with the right to paid leave to care for their children . For example, Armenia became one of the 114 countries (out of the 190 measured) that introduced paid leave for fathers after its amended Labor Code came into effect in 2021.

International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) (April 2022) This Policy Research Brief analyses how digitalisation can facilitate rural populations’ access to effective and adequate social protection and economic inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean. It investigates the region’s social protection response to COVID-19 and highlights three good practices in providing digitalised social protection to vulnerable rural populations during the crisis. Based on this analysis and considering the local obstacles to digitalised social protection in rural areas, recommendations are provided to build rural social protection back better after the pandemic.

Asian Development Bank (May 2022) This report shares insights on capacity building for long-term care in six countries at different stages of population aging: Indonesia, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, and Viet Nam. It explores these countries’ long-term care systems and their particular circumstances and challenges. It also examines what they have in common and highlights good practices that may be helpful to other countries facing similar issues. The report draws on insights from the Asian Development Bank technical assistance project Strengthening Developing Member Countries’ Capacity in Elderly Care.

wtwco.com (19.05.2022)  Trial private retirement savings system to be rolled out in select cities in China in an effort to support an aging population.

worldbank.org (10.02.2022)  The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated poverty and threatened livelihoods in Liberia. The need to respond to this challenge spurred the expansion and digitization of the government’s ongoing cash transfer program. The Liberia Social Safety Nets Project launched the government’s first-ever urban cash transfer program. It provided emergency cash transfers for close to 15,000 households living in vulnerable communities in the Greater Monrovia area, which had recorded the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Liberia. These households received the cash transfers in their mobile wallet accounts. Importantly, up to 70 percent of cash recipients were women.

Global Times (21.04.2022) China will soon start a new era of "private pensions" with the imminent implementation of a relevant mechanism, according to a report by the Shanghai Securities News published on Wednesday. The new mechanism, which is characterized by policy support from the government, voluntary participation and market-oriented operations, will be an important transformation of the current pension system that has a basic pension insurance and a corporate pension. According to the report, those who contribute to the basic pension insurance for workers in cities and towns, as well as in the life insurance system for urban and rural residents can participate in the private pension system.

World Economic Forum  (17.05.2022) China is a rapidly graying country with those aged 60 or above reaching 267 million or 18.9% of the total population, and this may rise to one-third of the population before 2050. Welfare reform must work in tandem with social policy so as to make active aging an integral part of economic growth, linking health to wealth and common prosperity. Healthcare, labour reskilling and gender parity are three areas of focus for domestic policy to solve the challenges of China’s aging population.

Economic Research Forum (ERF) (February 2022) This policy brief assesses the impact of COVID-19 on Middle East and North Africa (MENA) labor markets through June 2021. We use data from the four waves of the ERF COVID-19 MENA monitor household surveys, spanning November 2020, February 2021, April 2021, and June 2021. We focus on Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia and developments between February 2021 and June 2021. Retrospective data on February 2020 labor market outcomes allows us to compare pre-pandemic conditions to the results of the multiple waves, facilitating study of the evolution of challenges in the labor market. 

developmentpathways.co.uk (2022)  The report builds on our previous research with ITUC, showing the economic benefits of social protection by examining the different financing options that states have at their disposal in order to strengthen and extend their social protection systems. The study simulates the effects of different tax financing scenarios for social protection on household income, employment and overall GDP. We carried out computable general equilibrium analysis for Bangladesh, Colombia, Costa Rica, Georgia, Ghana, India, Rwanda and Serbia.

europeansting.com (06.05.2022) China’s plan to “gradually delay” the country’s legal retirement age has managed to unify a wide variety of people around a single sentiment: they don’t like it. As a country looking for ways to address the fact that it may not have enough workers paying into its pension system to support an ageing population, however, China is far from alone. In more than half of the 38 OECD member states, some of the most prosperous nations on Earth, normal retirement age is expected to increase by the time young people now entering the workforce depart during their silver years, according to one projection.

theconversation.com (26.04.2022) So low is Australia’s unemployment rate, the official count says there are now just 580,300 people unemployed – the least since 2009, when Australia’s population was one-sixth smaller than it is today. Compared to just before the start of the pandemic, 184,800 fewer Australians are now unemployed.

Retirement saving is at the centre of the debate on rising income and wealth inequality. This column studies the role of the pension system in wealth accumulation and distribution in Denmark. The authors find that a pension reform in the late 1980s increased the savings rate and aggregate pension assets significantly by introducing mandated funded pensions. Moreover, it has had an equalising effect on the wealth distribution. The findings illustrate the importance of pension system design for the level and distribution of wealth.