Thailand’s Old Age Pension: an example of the importance of good quality analysis
I recently come across a draft report by the World Bank on Thailand’s old age pension system. The report states it is for consultation, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to provide a few thoughts and helpfully point out a key problem with the analysis. In 2009, Thailand implemented a large-scale...
“Growing debate around universality” sees diverging estimates of basic income impacts
3rd September: A “growing debate around universality” in the design of social protection programmes has been acknowledged by a senior economist at the World Bank. His comments come after the...
A Case Study of How Not to do Targeting Analysis
Stephen Kidd provides a critique of a recent World Bank paper that provides an excellent example of how not to do targeting analysis. The World Bank paper demonstrates how to...
Urgent: World Bank safety net needed
Beginning in the early 1980s, the World Bank (with the International Monetary Fund) foisted structural adjustment programmes on a variety of poor countries around the developing world. These programmes, based on the forced application of new ideologies of liberalisation and privatisation, led to massive unemployment, human misery and deprivation. Jobs...
Universal social protection: the ILO attempt, once more, to persuade the World Bank to commit to inclusivity and the right to social security for all
On Wednesday 21st September 2016, we heard the apparently joyous news that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and World Bank had launched the Global Partnership for Universal Social Protection which “aims to make pensions, maternity, disability and child benefits, among others, available to all persons.” Does this send hope to...
The argument for impactful, sustainable social protection laid out in The Hague
So-called ‘pro-poor’ social protection programmes lead to fewer of the poorest being covered, and beneficiaries receiving lower transfer values, a seminar in The Hague has heard. Development Pathways’ Senior Social...
To condition or not to condition: what is the evidence?
‘The World Bank do not like having conditions imposed on them: so why impose them on others?’ In the first of our Pathways Perspectives of the year, we look at...
Enough with the KIDDing around – let’s tackle the BIG questions!
Not too long ago, my colleague, Stephen Kidd, wrote a blog called ‘The debate in the World Bank on the Proxy Means Test hots up: or does it?’ (you can find the blog here). In it, he took issue with the way that the Bank’s Social Protection and Labour Group is...
Under threat: social protection that includes everybody in their old age?
October 1st is the International Day of Older Persons, this year about ensuring older people can fully contribute to society. It’s a day for everyone, since we all hope to reach old age and enjoy long and fruitful lives. And, of course, none of us want our last years destroyed...
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...