New report highlights the urgency, viability and positive impacts of social pensions in a rapidly ageing world
28/01/2026
By Cherian Mathews, CEO of HelpAge International Around the world, populations are ageing at a pace and nowhere more so than in Asia-Pacific, where, by 2050, one in four people will be over the age of 60. Longer lives undoubtedly are a triumph of development, but these seismic changes also...
Who gets help and why? The politics of targeting knowledge in Indonesia’s cash transfer programme
By John McCarthy In September 2025, Indonesian media reported that 45 per cent of social assistance recipients may have been mistargeted.¹ Earlier assessments suggested that the flagship social assistance programme (PKH) reduced stunting, increased school enrolment, and improved maternal health outcomes.² Now, reports circulated that more than 1.9 million households had...
20/01/2026
The hidden costs of opaque targeting – rethinking aid allocation in Lebanon and beyond
Chloé de Soye and Cynthia Saghir Drawing on field insights and research, this blog examines how the opaque Proxy Means Test (PMT) in Lebanon’s Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) system fuels misinformation, mistrust, and social tensions across both Lebanese and Syrian communities. It argues that targeting is not just a...
12/01/2026
Taking social security back to the 19th century: has this been the main achievement of the World Bank’s engagement in social security in recent decades?
By, Stephen Kidd Bloomsbury have just launched a new book by Matthew Greenslade, called “Beyond the World Bank: the Fight for Universal Social Protection in the Global South.” As the name suggests, it’s a strident critique of the World Bank’s approach to social security across low- and middle-income countries. It...
07/01/2026
Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past 20 years: universal social security is affordable everywhere
Author: Stephen Kidd I started working full-time on social security – often referred to as social protection in international development – just over 20 years ago. At the time, social security was regarded as an innovation in international development circles although, in most high-income countries, it was already a mainstay...
04/12/2025
Superfluous, pernicious, atrocious and abominable: the case against Conditional Cash Transfers
Originally published on May 31, 2007. A version of this blog was also published in the IDS Bulletin, May 2007 Volume 38 Issue 3 pages 75-78. In 1792, the first consumer boycott was organised to protest against the inhumane treatment of slaves in the production of sugar in the West...
28/07/2025
The World Bank’s State of Social Protection Report 2025: The 2-Billion Person Challenge shows that it is not learning its own lessons
By Matthew Greenslade The World Bank’s long-term advocacy of poverty targeting social protection schemes has been punctuated by moments of relative enlightenment, where the costs of poverty targeting have been recognised. But its push for poverty-targeted benefits as the basis of the tax-financed side of national social protection systems has...
19/05/2025