The Social Protection Index (SPI) was developed for countries in Asia and the Pacific in 2003 - 2006. The index summarizes the extent of social protection in the countries, giving ADB and the DMCs better quantitative and qualitative information on social protection activities and an internationally comparable database of social protection expenditures, coverage, distribution, and impact. In 2010, ADB in collaboration with ILO and OECD/Korea Policy Center is updating and improving the SPI which builds on the SPI work done earlier. The SPI Update introduced other components and institutional arrangements to sustain the effective use of the social protection indicators in policy analysis and formulation in the DMCs. The main objective will be to strengthen social protection in the DMCs by updating and improving the SPI and building the capacity of the DMCs to measure, monitor, and analyze social protection systematically. This SPI database contains DMCs' annual data on social protection expenditures for Social Assistance (SA), Social Insurance (SI), and Labor Market Programs (LMP); and their respective number of beneficiaries. It also contains the basic economic and social statistics of countries relevant to SP Index calculation like GDP, population, labor force, and poverty indicators. The graphical presentation of the derived SPI for DMCs in terms of SA, SI and LMP; breadth and depth; and poor and non-poor can also viewed in this database.