Inua Jamii Senior Citizens’ Scheme

The Inua Jamii Senior Citizens’ Scheme is a tax-financed pension-tested social pension offering universal pension coverage for all citizens of Kenya once they reach 70 years of age. The programme, implemented since 2018, marks a significant milestone for the expansion of the lifecycle approach to social protection in Kenya, since all citizens are now entitled to a minimum income guarantee in their old age. This ILO country brief, authored by Development Pathways’ Anh Tran and Richard Chirchir, outlines: the rationale for the social protection scheme and how the inclusive scheme evolved; the scheme’s coverage, transfer values,  institutional arrangements and legal framework, and registration and payment processes; and the next steps. It also points to early results on the scheme’s impacts, both from the Government of Kenya’s monitoring, and from a qualitative research study of its effects in Nandi County that launched in 2018. The briefing was first published on Socialprotection.org.