(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.

Finnish Centre for Pensions (08.05.2024) The number of light entrepreneurs has grown rapidly in recent years. At the same time, the profile of light entrepreneurs has changed: they are increasingly younger, of foreign origin and have only a basic education. The Finnish Centre for Pensions’ study examines, for the first time, the careers, income and pension accrual of light entrepreneurs in Finland over a period of several years.

Switzerland’s AHV/AVS 21 law, which was approved by parliament and then passed by public referendum in 2022, took effect January 1, 2024. Among other things, the law will increase the age for normal retirement (now called the “reference age”) for women under the social security AHV/AVS[1] retirement program as well as for pension plans that provide the mandatory BVG/LPP[2] retirement benefits.

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.

worldbank.org (28.05.2024) Reina Solano, a single mother of five, lives in a modest house in Higüey, in La Altagracia province in the Dominican Republic. Her household was among the 35,000 identified as the most affected by Hurricane Fiona. The heavy rains and strong winds of up to 150 kilometers per hour caused severe flooding and extensive damage, destroying homes and key infrastructure in the Dominican Republic. “Fiona was a disaster for me.

.ilo.org (27.05.2024) Migration in the East and Horn of Africa (EHoA) is characterised as mixed migration. The region is a source, transit, and destination for various migratory flows, with forced migration and labour migration continuing to drive the main movement trends within and across countries. Migrant workers, asylum seekers and refugees, often travel along similar routes into, within, and out of the region.

The New York Times (25.05.2024) For more than two years, a group of health experts, economists and lawyers in the U.S. government has worked to address a growing public health crisis: people dying on the job from extreme heat. In the coming months, this team of roughly 30 people at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is expected to propose a new rule that would require employers to protect an estimated 50 million people exposed to high temperatures while they work.

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.