worldbank.org (29.01.2025) The Sahel is faced with increasingly frequent and severe interconnected shocks, particularly those related to climate change and conflict, exacerbating risks and vulnerabilities to poverty, food insecurity, inequality, and low levels of human capital. To effectively respond to these crises, governments require systems enabling them to rapidly and accurately identify sudden changes in household welfare.

thedailyguardian.com 801.02.20259 Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget 2025 speech, announced that the government will issue ID cards to gig workers. These workers will also get healthcare benefits through a social security scheme. Moreover, the government will invest in street vendors, urban workers, and online platform workers to improve their financial security.

Marco de Ciberseguridad - Reference website of AGESIC, the uruguayan egov agency.

worldbank.org (2025) The World Bank has worked to strengthen social registries in LAC and globally for several decades. This technical note aims to contribute to reducing the knowledge gap on the state of the art and challenges of social registries in LAC, identify where they are about various analysis criteria, and generate recommendations on strategies to strengthen and consolidate their role in the design, implementation, and evaluation of social policies in the region. This technical note is organized into five sections, including this introduction.

wtwco.com (15.01.2025) The Employee Welfare Fund, Thailand’s much-anticipated financial safety net for employees, is set to launch in late 2025, bringing new contribution requirements for employers and their workforces.

In 2022, China’s central government piloted new tax incentives in 36 cities and regions to encourage employees to make voluntary contributions to individual retirement accounts to complement social security pension benefits and help address the challenges of a rapidly aging population. After a successful pilot, the system is now fully implemented nationwide as of December 15, 2024.

socialprotection.org (15.01.2025) Artificial Intelligence (AI) has undergone rapid advancements in recent times in terms of computational power and general usage of algorithms across multiple areas, such as healthcare diagnosis, fraud detection and public service delivery. As we will see in this post, usage of AI, particularly algorithms, is not novel in public policy or in social protection and tends to increase (Benoit 2024). The wider acceptance of AI and general utilization of algorithms in public policy serves as the main point of contention.

Institute of Development Studies (17.12.2024) The introduction of ‘digital-by-default’ welfare and social protection systems in the UK and beyond has delivered efficiencies and cost savings for governments and can be convenient for recipients. But, given the rapid pace of change, we need to understand the ethical, social, and political implications of digital welfare from the perspectives of the poorest and most marginalised members of our societies.

bruegel.org (23.01.2025) Demographic change and ageing populations in European Union countries will impact many aspects of the economy and have a direct effect on long-term care (LTC) systems. Demand for LTC already exceeds supply in many EU countries, leading to the ‘care gap’. This gap is expected to widen, threatening quality of life for the elderly, exacerbating gender disparities and imposing significant economic costs. The root causes of the gap include demographic shifts, inadequate public investment, workforce shortages and a heavy reliance on informal caregiving.

Development Pathways (27.01.2025) Who would’ve guessed that one of the boldest moves in designing social security benefits would come from—not even a country—but a state in India called Jharkhand? For those unfamiliar, Jharkhand is one of India’s poorest states,¹ nestled in the country’s eastern region, often making headlines for its mineral wealth rather than groundbreaking social policy. Yet here we are, talking about Jharkhand as the unlikely pioneer of what can only be described as a “‘Semi-UBI”: a universal basic income, but just for women aged 18 to 50.