In just two decades since the early 2000s, social protection established itself as a vibrant social policy sector in countries across the Global South, from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa to South Asia. Social protection...

Many countries, including in Asia, took extraordinary measures to finance and strengthen their welfare systems in response to the pandemic. While most of these programs were disappointedly short-lived (with an average duration of...

Improving the social protection of atypical workers has been high on the European agenda in recent years. With the European Pillar of Social Rights of 2017, the European Union sought to break away from a decade of austerity and strict economic...

Informal traders are a ubiquitous sight on the streets of South Africa's towns, cities and villages. Some sell fresh fruits and vegetables; others offer snacks and hot food, while still others give passers-by a convenient spot to buy loose cigarettes...

An SP-ODE can be thought of as a unified, digital platform to access welfare schemes spanning different departments of the government. It is a multi-sided platform, always involving the citizen and the government and, in more mature systems, also,...

Recent studies posit that the per capita incomes of developing countries are at last on track to catch up to those of industrialised countries as policies and institutions in these countries are converging to those of the rich world...

Singapore has recently announced a new healthcare reform plan that will shift the country’s healthcare strategy towards preventive care. The program is called Healthier SG and aims to provide a family physician and one health plan...

Amid ongoing food and fuel crises worldwide, general subsidies are making a big comeback as a way of delivering social protection to the population. In fact, according to a World Bank tracker, the number of social protection...

Over the last three decades, there has been a proliferation of social protection programs across the Global South in what some have dubbed a development revolution. International development agencies across the ideological spectrum...

Despite significant labour shortages in many sectors of the economy, labour markets across OECD countries do not give the same opportunities to everyone. In particular, people with disability—about 10-15% of the working-age...

About 39 per cent of all job card-holding households interested in working under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) 2005 did not get a single day of work in the Covid year of 2020-21, revealed a...

The COVID-19 crisis highlighted how digital public infrastructure (DPI) can play a critical role for governments to deliver social assistance quickly and safely.  DPI not only allowed governments to reach an unprecedented number of...