OECD (May 2023) Effective welfare policies need to consider interactions among economic, social and environmental outcomes. This paper, prepared to support Finance track discussions during Japan’s 2023 Presidency of the G7, describes a variety of national and international initiatives to improve the measurement of multidimensional welfare and well-being "beyond GDP". For example, the 2025 System of National Accounts (SNA) will provide greater visibility to the digital economy and free digital services, unpaid household activities, and the depletion of natural capital.

oecd (20.06.2024) Society at a Glance 2024: OECD Social Indicators, the tenth edition of the biennial OECD overview of social indicators, addresses the growing demand for quantitative evidence on social well-being and its trends. The report features a special chapter on fertility trends which discusses evidence from recent OECD analysis on the effect of labour market outcomes, housing costs and different aspects of the family policy framework (e.g. parental leave, childcare, and financial supports) on fertility trends and highlights key policy challenges.

European Commission (20.06.2024) The report highlights that European pension systems have protected retired Europeans’ living standards in the face of global challenges. Resilient public pensions, indexation, and redistribution mechanisms have maintained pension adequacy during crises. However, pensions are predicted to decrease, calling for reinforced policies to promote longer careers, healthy ageing policies, inclusive labour markets, and greater flexibility in retirement pathways.

worldbank.org (21.05.2024) Haba Haba, which means “bit by bit” in Swahili, is a voluntary pension scheme in Kenya for workers in informal employment and promises to be a scheme through which they can slowly but surely save for their old age. The scheme, administered by the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) was launched as a pilot in 2019. Haba Haba allows for easy, anytime, anywhere savings by informal economy workers.

oecd (13.06.2024) As part of broader digitalisation efforts, half of public employment services (PES) in OECD countries are employing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance their services. AI is being adopted across all key tasks of PES, including most commonly to match jobseekers with vacancies. While several PES have been using such tools for a decade, adoption of AI has been increasing in recent years as these become more accessible. New AI use cases have emerged to assist employers in designing vacancy postings and jobseekers in their career management and job-search strategies.

(10.05.2024) Extending social insurance to platform workers in the Republic of Korea offers valuable lessons for other countries facing similar challenges. This brief outlines recent advancements in extending employment injury and employment insurance coverage to platform workers, emphasizing legal frameworks and operational processes leveraging digital technologies.

oecd.org (28.05.2024) Despite having advanced social protection systems, OECD countries still face challenges in identifying, enrolling, and providing benefits and services to all those in need. Even when programmes are well-designed and adequately funded, cumbersome enrolment processes and challenges in service and benefit delivery can be an obstacle to the full take-up of social programmes. Advances in digital technologies and data can go a long way towards making social protection more accessible and effective.

worldbank.org (08.05.2024) The Playbook on Digital Social Protection Delivery Systems (DSPDS) offers a modular DSPDS framework for a holistic approach to data management, analytics, and decision support to scale-up the delivery of social protection to people in a time of expanding crises. The Playbook comprises a Guidance Note and an Assessment Tool designed. for social protection policy makers and practitioners working in low- and middle-income countries.

ilo.org (23.04.2024) The primary aim of the study is to provide updated estimates of the financing gap to attain universal coverage for social protection floors. This estimation encompasses 133 low- and middle-income countries, and includes five income security guarantees (for children, persons with severe disabilities, mothers of newborns, older persons and the unemployed), together with essential health care.  Estimates show that, for low- and middle-income countries, the financing gap to achieve universal coverage of social protection floors is 3.3 per cent of GDP annually.