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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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”.

spdci.org (2023) - This document offers guidance on the application of the PDDs to social protection. After presenting the background and objectives, it sets out how each principle applies to digital social protection solutions. First, the original definition is presented for each principle, followed by the social protection perspective, and the key actions to apply it in practice. Barriers to implementation are highlighted and ways to overcome these barriers suggested. Country-level examples of good and bad practices, as well as additional resources, are provided throughout.

worldbank.org (14.02.2023) Imagine this scenario. A mother delivers a child at a health facility. When the birth is recorded in the health information system, it notifies the ward office. The mother receives a call from the ward office to register her child’s birth. At the time of birth registration, she learns if the child is eligible to receive a child nutrition grant. She also receives information about vaccinations and early childhood education. The birth registration system is linked to a household registry. Each new birth also updates the household database providing the palika with an overview of all households and individuals at any time. Such seamless access to services and information about benefits and services is unfortunately not quite what mothers face in Nepal.  The lack of linkages is apparent if we just look at rates of facility delivery (77.5 percent) compared to birth registration before 12 months at (59.5 percent). That means over 17 percent of births that occur at health facilities are not registered in the first 12 months. One reason, among many, for low birth registration is a lack integration both at the front-end (point of service delivery) and the back-end (information system).  Nepal is now working to establish an Integrated Social Registry which can serve as a platform to link across social protection programs and information systems and help address this issue, among several others. 

oecd.org (23.02.2023) The COVID-19 pandemic had massive consequences for societies and health systems across the OECD and beyond. Health systems were not resilient enough. Resilient health systems plan and are ready for shocks, such as pandemics, economic crises or the effects of climate change. They are able to minimise the negative consequences of crises, recover as quickly as possible, and adapt to become better performing and more prepared. Smart, targeted investments in health system resilience are needed to improve health and ensure the next shock is less disruptive and costly. This report reviews the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and applies them to build policy recommendations to ensure the global community is ready for the next crisis. The reviews and recommendations cover health system issues – including workforce, digitalisation, continuity of care and mental health – and other topics, including long-term care, supply chains and international co-operation.

aarp.org (14.02.2022) In Mexico, they’re teaching Indigenous artisans how to sell their textiles and crafts online. In Ethiopia and Colombia, they’re experimenting with new ways to provide health care services to residents in rural communities. In Bangladesh and Ecuador, they’re using targeted cash transfers to help older widows and others avoid poverty when they are unable to earn income. Around the globe, governments and other policymakers are exploring solutions to prevent older adults from living in poverty or otherwise being shut out of society, according to the Aging Readiness & Competitiveness Report 4.0 from AARP International.

Health Systems & Reform Volume 9, 2023 - Issue 1 - The Chilean presidential elections of 2021 included an unprecedented topic in the country’s political debate: long-term care (LTC). Although some public policies and programs have been in place for at least 20 years, during this 2021 presidential election LTC was mentioned for the first time in a political campaign. Five out of seven candidates highlighted the importance of LTC in their proposals and designed policies to address it. Why did this topic gain momentum as a campaign topic in 2021? What can explain the sudden inclusion of a new topic on the Chilean political agenda? Using Kingdon’s multiple streams framework this article aims to understand the factors explaining the inclusion of LTC in the Chilean political agenda during the past presidential elections. A two-step qualitative research design was performed using a case study approach. As a first step, a documentary analysis of the campaign programs was conducted searching for references to LTC proposals. In a second step, semi-structured interviews were carried out with representatives from three of the seven campaign teams, including the teams that reached the ballotage. Data were analyzed using Kingdon’s multiple streams framework. Results showed that the availability of national data on LTC needs helped highlight the problem and acted as a facilitator for advocacy; international organizations and other countries’ experiences in implementing LTC systems served as policy entrepreneurs; and four events—the feminist movement, the social outbreak with the constitutional process, and the COVID-19 pandemic—pushed LTC forward on the political agenda. The case of Chile illustrates how Kingdon’s framework can be used to identify facilitators for LTC inclusion on the political agenda, serving as an example for other countries facing similar issues and fostering the global debate around the increase in LTC needs.

(25.01.2023) Low-income Americans are struggling to obtain help from state governments when they most need it, facing long delays and sometimes insurmountable hurdles when applying for social safety net programs such as food assistance, welfare benefits and health insurance, according to a new report.

Indonesia is among the countries with the highest exposure to natural disasters, and risks are expected to increase in the future due to climate change. Natural disasters and also other shocks require welldeveloped social protection systems that are able to cushion the economic consequences for those most vulnerable to these events. Many international and national organisations advocate for ‘Adaptive Social Protection’ (ASP) which links social policy with strategies on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. The main emphasis is on improving households’ ability to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks.

This paper uses the tax-benefit microsimulation model INDOMOD to analyse the adaptiveness of the Indonesian social protection system both under normal conditions, and after a simulated hypothetical income shock caused by a natural disaster, using El Niño as a showcase. El Niño is a climate phenomenon that has the ability to change the global atmospheric circulation and as such to influence temperature and precipitation around the world. The drought caused in severely hit regions in Indonesia leads to a disruption of established crop patterns and harvest losses. The dry periods furthermore often cause forest fires affecting the livelihood of those employed in the forestry, transportation, tourism, and public health sector.

The book deals with the phenomenon of platform work and contains national reports (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom), other more transversal reports dealing with the issue of fundamental (collective) workers' rights, as well as the applicable European legal framework. The idea of the book is to underline differences and similarities between the Member States' Systems and the UK System and to understand if there is a common ground of rights and protections for platform workers in the EU.

This module stresses specific challenges for the extension of social security to workers in new forms of employment, particularly platform workers, and explores some policy options, based on international experience and guided by ILO social security standards.

The European Parliament reached a deal on the platform workers’ directive, pending confirmation by the Employment and Social Affairs Committee on 12 December.

The deal is the outcome of months of lengthy negotiations on the platform workers’ directive, which seeks for the most part to clarify platform workers’ employment status.

“There is a deal, and I am very happy about it,” Elisabetta Gualmini, the left-wing lawmaker spearheading the directive, told EURACTIV.

Finding a deal on such a complex and politicised file required Gualmini to walk a fine line, as the divide among MEPs was stark, with debates carried out on more on lines of national culture than political affiliation.

Platform work is the matching of demand and supply of paid work through an online platform using an algorithm. Three parties are involved in the matching process: the client demanding work, the platform which manages the algorithm and the person who provides the work through the platform. It is work based on the performance of individual tasks or projects rather than a continuous employment relationship. A larger task is usually divided up into smaller subtasks, or ‘micro tasks’, that are independent, homogenous and contribute to producing a specific output. These tasks are carried out separately, resulting in a widespread, even global, division of tasks.

Center for Global Development (19.02.2023) Kenya moved towards electronic payments of social benefits in 2013. In 2018 the payments system for its premier social protection program, Inua Jamii, was restructured to offer most, but not all, beneficiaries a choice between several payment service providers (PSPs), all commercial banks. This study surveys the payment system from the perspective of recipients, including their views on convenience and the benefits from competition. It also considers whether these digital G2P payments programs have increased financial inclusion more generally – recognizing that this was already high in Kenya due to the market penetration of M-Pesa digital wallets. It finds strong support for making payments through financial accounts. The overwhelming majority of respondents consider this to be a good system, with some favoring the commercial bank channel and others expressing a preference for direct payments through wallets. There is strong support for offering choice where this is feasible, but we find that the single payer G2P model can also be effective depending on local conditions. While social transfers may have enabled poor people to afford cell phones and mobile money accounts, the system can be developed further to enhance financial services access.  

Pension Policy International (08.02.2023) China is planning to offer free fertility treatment to citizens under its national insurance scheme in a bid to reverse its plummeting birth rate. The National Healthcare Security Administration said on Friday it would extend its coverage to help shoulder the costs for families trying to conceive. It said the new coverage would include assisted reproductive technology (ART) techniques and also cover labor analgesia to ease pain in childbirth. The most commonly performed ART procedure is in vitro fertilization (IVF). The administration described China’s falling population as one of the biggest obstacles to national development and stressed it had already added ovulation-inducing drugs to its coverage, to help “reduce the burden of infertility.” The expanded coverage is part of a wider attempt by Chinese authorities to persuade more people to get married and have more children. The country’s birthrate has been falling for years and last year the country recorded its first population decline in more than 60 years.