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These are the countries where people retire the youngest pmassetti

(18.04.2023) For some nations, the growing share of residents leaving the workforce presents challenges

Pensions
US: The healthcare system is unprepared for an aging population pmassetti

morningstar.com (08.04.2023) A conservative estimate of 30,000 geriatricians will be needed to care for older adults by 2030, currently there is only about a quarter of that. This article is reprinted by permission from NextAvenue.org. The U.S. healthcare system must address the shortage of geriatricians -- and fast. The U.S. population is growing and aging, with an estimated 42% increase in those aged 65 and older between 2019 and 2034.

Medical care United States
User friendly Website of the Social Security Agency in the US lfrota

The Social Security Administration (SSA) in the United States of America launched its redesigned website, ssa.gov. The new site leveraged human-centered design concepts to build out self-service capabilities and improve accessibility. SSA analyzed customer data and conducted user research to inform where the gaps were, test designs and implement iterative changes on the site.

Old-age pensions, Survivors, Innovation capacity, Digital inclusion, E-services, Client United States
Social protection and rural transformation in Africa pmassetti

fao.org (2023) This article develops a conceptual framework on pathways through which non-contributory social protection can contribute to a resilient and inclusive agricultural growth in rural Africa. It draws insights from a review of rigorous empirical evidence on the impacts of cash transfers and multifaceted cash plus programs on range of relevant productive outcomes, including: accumulation of productive assets; inputs and farm management practices; off-farm labour and non-farm enterprises; and farm production and income. The review demonstrates an emerging consensus in the literature that access to social protection programs contributes positively to increasing the productive asset holdings of rural people, increased use of improved inputs and farm practices, and a shift away from casual wage labour arrangements. Moreover, there is limited evidence on heterogeneous effects across different baseline characteristics (income, sex, labor-constrained households, among others). Finally, the article highlights how social protection programs should be considered an integral part of broader rural and agricultural development strategies in order to achieve a more productive, resilient, and equitable rural transformation in rural Africa.

rural world Extension of coverage, Cash transfers Africa
At the mercy of the algorithm – Work and digitalisation pmassetti

 IPS Journal (24.03.2023) Excessive reliance on algorithmic management has raised concerns regarding its opaque decision-making mechanisms and implication for workers

digital platforms
Platform workers need stronger legal protection – Work and digitalisation pmassetti

IPS Journal (21.01.2023) This year will be a crucial year for the platform economy. After the European Commission’s proposal on improving working conditions in platform work in December 2021 and long discussions in the European Parliament and Council in 2022, this year, the directive might be finally adopted – potentially impacting the lives of millions.

digital platforms Extension of coverage Europe
Mapping Platform Economy: FES Future of Work – Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung pmassetti

In the volatile and crisis-ridden European economic context, online work has grown in popularity through the adoption of technology that can help organise work, and manage and monitor workers. According to the ETUI report published in February, Juggling Online Gigs with Offline Jobs, online roles are more prevalent in European regions where there are very few opportunities to get into traditional jobs.

digital platforms Europe
Poor quality online work more prevalent in low-opportunity EU regions pmassetti

euobserver.com (08.03.2023) A new report published by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) highlights how platform work could be exacerbating inequality growing in the European labour market, and especially within member states themselves. Basically, it examined if regions with low availability of quality offline jobs led to more people taking more precarious online jobs. In the volatile and crisis-ridden European economic context, online work has grown in popularity through the adoption of technology that can help organise work, and manage and monitor workers. According to the ETUI report published in February, Juggling Online Gigs with Offline Jobs, online roles are more prevalent in European regions where there are very few opportunities to get into traditional jobs.

digital platforms Europe
"The pension age cannot be same for everybody": EU Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights pmassetti

france24.com (24.03.2023) Talking Europe speaks to the European Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, Nicolas Schmit. With anger growing in France about the government's push to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64, and the EU facing an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, his portfolio is very much in the spotlight –  including recommendations to encourage a Minimum Income for all.

Pensions Europe
EU: Platform workers are becoming more and more commonplace pmassetti

europeandatajournalism.eu (27.03.2023) Delivery, transport, but also business services: more and more workers are opting for self-employed status by using online platforms to obtain assignments. This is a common phenomenon throughout the European Union.

digital platforms Extension of coverage Europe
Japan wants 85% of male workers to take paternity leave. But fathers are too afraid to take it pmassetti

cnn.com (27.03.2023) Japanese authorities have widely promoted the term in the past decade to combat the country’s notoriously long working hours that have not only deprived workaholic fathers of family time and stay-home mothers of careers, but have helped drive the birth rate to one of the lowest in the world. To seize the “last chance to reverse” the situation, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last week unveiled a raft of policies, including boosts to child support and a pledge to lift the number of male workers taking paternity leave from the current 14% to 50% by 2025, and 85% by 2030. But some in the world’s third-largest economy – which has long struggled with a falling fertility rate and an aging population – are skeptical the plan can really move the needle. Makoto Iwahashi, a member of POSSE, a labor union dedicated to younger workers, said while the government’s plan was well-intentioned, many Japanese men were simply too scared to take paternity leave due to potential repercussions from their employers.

family Family benefits japan
New Free Digital Software to Manage Health and Social Protection Programs pmassetti

openimis.org (20.03.2023) The World Bank, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) have announced an integrated new open-source software package to improve the management of social protection and health financing schemes in low- and middle-income countries.  The new software combines the openIMIS initiative, financed by Germany and Switzerland, with the World Bank`s digital platform CORE-MIS. It will serve as a digital public good and can manage a variety of schemes ranging from health insurance, employment injury insurance, voucher schemes to cash transfers and economic inclusion programs. The software will be available to governments at no cost.

Data management
Effects of digitalization on the human centricity of social security administration and services pmassetti

ILO Working paper 87 (Feb 2023)  Human-centered social security administrations keep the human dimension in control of decision-making. This is made possible through the insight to be gained from digital data-driven innovation in policy and governance and managerial reforms. Moreover, there are risks associated with collecting and analysing people’s digital data analysed and using it to further automate business processes. Human centricity is examined in this paper, through a human + machine approach, starting with social policy through to service delivery. Machines using AI and related technologies are designed to aug¬ment rather than replace human decision-making capability. This augmentation approach is essential in matters where discretion, compassion, reasoning, judgement, and empathy are essential for equity, fair¬ness, and fiscal responsibility within social security administration. This working paper presents a series of vignette style case studies (13) as examples of digitisation and/or digitalisation in the context of human centricity in social security administration.

Innovation capacity, Information and communication technology, Service delivery
Lab de la sécurité sociale - France pmassetti Innovation capacity france
China to raise retirement age to deal with aging population pmassetti

pensionpolicyinternational.com (14.03.2023) China is planning to raise its retirement age gradually and in phases to cope with the country’s rapidly aging population, the state-backed Global Times said on Tuesday, citing a senior expert from China’s Ministry of Human Resources. Jin Weigang, president of the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Security Sciences, said China was eyeing a “progressive, flexible and differentiated path to raising the retirement age”, meaning that it would be delayed initially by a few months, which would be subsequently increased. “People nearing retirement age will only have to delay retirement for several months,” the Global Times said, citing Jin. Young people may have to work a few years longer but will have a long adaptation and transition period, he said.

Pensions china
Cash Transfers and Digital Financial Inclusion: Regional evidence from the Asia-Pacific region, with a focus on Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Nepal pmassetti

World Food Programme (27.02.2023) The study examines the barriers and opportunities to strengthening digital financial inclusion for cash transfer recipients in the Asia-Pacific region, with a focus on Bangladesh, Cambodia and Nepal. Specifically, it maps the existing evidence on the landscape of digital financial inclusion and cash transfer programmes in the region, and explores the perspectives and experiences of cash transfer recipients in receiving digital cash transfers. Based on this, it provides recommendations for humanitarian and development actors, governments and WFP to improve the realisation of digital financial inclusion through the digitisation of cash assistance.

epayment Digital inclusion, E-services Asia
Employment Policy Action Facility: ILO launches innovative platform to strengthen policy action for full employment pmassetti

A new web-based platform that provides easy access to cutting-edge employment policy expertise has been launched by the International Labour Organization (ILO). The Employment Policy Action Facility  (EPAF), is a comprehensive platform that brings together the ILO’s latest evidence, expertise and policy advice. It offers innovative tools, including a curated list of key resources relevant to different stages of the policy action process.

Employment policies
Shock-responsive social protection and climate shocks in Latin America and the Caribbean: Lessons from COVID-19 pmassetti

iadb.org (Feb 2023) Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the regions most exposed and vulnerable to climate-related risks, with large shocks occurring regularly. Climate change is exacerbating the frequency and variability of climate related extremes and increasing slow onset events, threatening social and economic outcomes in the region. Responding to climate change will require stronger risk management systems that include social protection. Social protection systems in LAC are relatively advanced, but they do not yet consider climate shocks. Overall, social protection systems suffer from relatively low coverage, leaving significant parts of the population vulnerable to transient and chronic poverty in the face of shocks. The large social protection responses that LAC implemented to address the impacts of COVID-19 present an opportunity to prepare for the challenges arising from increased climate-related shocks. This study investigates how non-contributory social protection (mainly income support) has been used to respond to previous climate-related shocks and to COVID-19, and what are the implications for managing climate-related shocks in the future.

covid19 Environment and climate change, COVID-19 latin america
Adapting social protection systems to build disaster and climate resilience for all pmassetti

worldbank.org (07.03.2023) Gender dynamics impact the way people are affected by disasters, including their capacity to withstand and recover from them.  For example, in Mozambique, prevailing social norms often drive women to stay close to their homes while men pick up employment outside the community. When a flood comes, women salvage belongings and try to live on what is available, which may mean relying on negative coping strategies such as reducing food intake and taking their children, especially girls, out of school to help with household income. Adaptive social protection (ASP) systems play a crucial role in reducing the need for negative coping strategies by increasing vulnerable populations’ resilience and access to economic opportunities.

Shocks & extreme events
China’s big dilemma: What to do about an aging nation pmassetti

The Japan Times (05.03.2023) China’s population decline, which the Chinese government officially confirmed in January, has led many observers to wonder if the country’s current demographic trends threaten its stability.

china
Digital innovations in delivering social protection in rural areas: Lessons for public provisioning during the post-pandemic recovery and beyond pmassetti

International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) (31.12.2022) Over the past 20 years, considerable progress has been made in reducing poverty worldwide, with the expansion of social protection coverage and uptake playing a key role. To strengthen and expand the public provision of social protection, countries have been investing in the development of robust delivery systems, including digital tools, especially identification and payment systems and social registries. This report discusses the potential of digital technology to improve social protection performance in rural areas, as well as its limitations.

rural world Information and communication technology
Spain: Legislation introduces paid menstrual leave pmassetti

wtwco.com (27.03.2023) Spain passes Europe’s first law requiring employers to give female employees leave to recover from severe menstrual pain.

Medical care spain
Farmer registries and social protection information systems: Harnessing interoperability to improve outcomes for rural populations  mastertest

fao.org (28.02.2023) In recent years, the social protection sector has made great strides in strengthening registries and information systems, in an effort to expand and improve the delivery of ben- efits and services to the diverse target populations it seeks to serve. At the same time, agriculture and allied sectors are increasingly making strategic use of digital technologies, data and digitally-enabled business models to transform agri-food systems, as a means of achieving food security and nutrition, as well as climate adaptation goals. One tool is the increasing use of farmer registries – as well as registries of those working in sectors such as fisheries and forestry – for supporting the development and delivery of tailored and differentiated policies to small-scale food producers and vulnerable rural populations. The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated the potential of data exchange between the information systems that serve the agricultural and social protection sectors. This paper builds on recent experiences across a range of countries to highlight how these two information systems can ‘speak’ to each other to maximise mutual benefits and enable better support to smallholder farmers and other groups.

rural world Data management
Joint ILO–UNICEF report: More than a billion reasons: The urgent need to build universal social protection for children pmassetti

ilo.org (01.03.2023) This second joint ILO-Unicef report on social protection for children outlines the devastating impact of a lack of social protection on child poverty, health, education, nutrition, child marriage and child labour.

Children
Making access to social protection for workers and the self-employed more transparent through information and simplification pmassetti

European Social Policy Network (ESPN)europa.eu (31.01.2023) “Transparency” of social protection systems is essential for people's awareness of their rights and obligations concerning social protection and enables them to take informed decisions. It requires, in particular, that countries provide full information on social protection schemes, and also that they simplify, wherever needed and to the extent possible, access rules and administrative requirements linked to these schemes. This report explores the measures put in place by 35 European countries to improve the transparency of their social protection systems, focusing on the period January 2017 - April 2022. It shows the significant progress being made in the provision of digitalised, high-quality and easily accessible general and personalised information, partly accelerated by the Covid-19 crisis. In addition, the report explains that countries have simplified the rules, digitalised application procedures and streamlined administrative structures, with a view to ensuring a better flow of information. Nevertheless, several points are highlighted for further improvement, including: a) making access to information easier for the more vulnerable, for people with disabilities, and in certain cases for non-standard workers and the self-employed; b) simplifying complex rules governing application procedures, and promoting automatic granting of benefits; and c) evaluating regularly the transparency of policies and practices, including the consequences of digitalisation on access to information and the importance of bridging the “digital divide”.

self-employed Information and communication technology, Digital inclusion, Service quality european union