Poverty targeted schemes could face legal challenges, warns former UN Special Rapporteur
If countries continue to use targeted social protection schemes that fail to reach those in poverty, they may face legal challenges. This comment came from former UN Special Rapporteur on...
World Bank under fire over poverty-targeted schemes after global review of the evidence
The Interim President of the World Bank, Kristalina Georgieva, has been challenged by the BBC over the institution’s support for poverty-targeted social protection. Stephen Sackur of BBC HARDtalk today raises...
The Social Protection Flaw – or how not to win fiscal space for entitlements
The many disadvantages to poverty-targeted social protection include the fact that they never become entitlements that attract popular demand and the financial backing of governments, writes Nicholas Freeland, independent consultant. Freeland highlights...
Extent of World Bank’s poverty-targeting demands laid bare in civil society analysis
The World Bank pushes for more poverty-targeting in most of its loan conditions on social protection even whilst acknowledging the downsides to this means of selecting beneficiaries, a new analysis...
The IMF admits “narrow focus on poverty targeting,” but workers see “no clear change in policy”
The IMF has acknowledged it has had an “overly narrow focus on means-tested targeting” in social protection and that life-cycle benefits have some advantages. The details of the new IMF social...
“Redistributive” social protection key tool for addressing rising inequality, says global coalition
Rising inequality is a setback for the Sustainable Development Goals and must be combatted by improving coverage and adequacy of social protection systems, according to the Global Coalition for Social...
Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan lose out in their struggle with the IMF over the targeting of child benefits
All those supporting inclusive social protection will be sad to hear that, in the past couple of months, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia have both lost out to the International Monetary Fund in their struggles to establish universal child benefits. The IMF has obliged both countries to target their schemes at those...
Social Protection through the Looking Glass: Lewis Carroll’s parable for the unwary
What can a 19th Century work of literary nonsense teach us about global social protection debates? To mark April Fools’ Day, our guest blogger Nicholas Freeland suggests that Lewis Carroll’s work The Walrus and the Carpenter can tell us more more about prevailing dogmas in the sector than you might imagine! Lewis Carroll...
The political economy of social protection
The Academy on Social Security is organised by the International Training Centre of the ILO. It runs this year from 16 – 27 September. Stephen Kidd, Senior Social Policy Specialist...
Hit and Miss: An assessment of targeting effectiveness in social protection with additional analysis
This paper (now updated with additional analysis as of June 2020) is the result of a global review of the effectiveness of different methods of selecting social protection recipients, both...