Social protection policies play a critical role in realizing the human right to social security for all, reducing poverty and inequality, and promoting inclusive growth – by boosting human capital and productivity, and by supporting domestic demand and structural transformation of national economies. This ILO flagship report provides a global overview of the organization of social protection systems, their coverage and benefits, as well as public expenditures on social protection.

As USAID and other donors explore approaches and issues that can improve the poverty-reducing impact ofits market systems development work, labor markets—and in particular labor that is relevant to the poorest in

Analysis of women’s subordinate status in society by feminist academics and activists combines two sets of concerns: individual-level gender inequalities in the capacity to exercise choice and agency in different domains of women’s lives and the societal-level rules and norms that generate these inequalities on a systematic basis and reproduce them over time. The idea of women’s empowerment refers to the processes of change which expand their capacity for voice and agency by addressing these inequalities at both individual and societal level.

This paper updates the Social Risk Management (SRM) conceptual framework; the foundation of the World Bank's first Social Protection Sector Strategy. SRM 2.0 addresses the increasingly risky and uncertain world; with opportunities and outcomes driven by possible disruptions from technology, markets, climate change, etc. SRM 2.0 is a spatial assets and livelihoods approach to household well-being featuring a risk chain covering all households across the lifecycle and for both positive and negative events.

Social protection is typically recognised as an important policy instrument for addressing idiosyncratic shocks, but recently several studies have sought to investigate how social protection systems can also be resilient and respond to covariate shocks. Informed by this growing body of evidence, the main objective of this study is to identify opportunities and challenges for enhancing shock-responsiveness in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, by analysing the cases of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, State of Palestine, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016 is the first of an annual flagship report that will inform a global audience comprising development practitioners, policy makers, researchers, advocates, and citizens in general with the latest and most accurate estimates on trends in global poverty and shared prosperity.

In this presentation Devereux and Roelen explore the potential of various graduation programmes, based on comparative research conducted in six countries.

As the limitations of simple cash transfers as a tool for achieving food security and sustainable poverty reduction are recognized, combined interventions are increasingly being implemented. Such integrated approaches include: 1) cash transfers + savings provision, to alleviate extreme poverty, and 2) asset transfers + training for livelihood promotion.

All countries fund safety net programs for the protection of their people. Though an increasing number of safety net programs are extremely well thought out, adroitly implemented, and demonstrably effective, many others are not. This book aims to assist those concerned with social policy to understand why countries need social assistance, what kind of safety programs will serve those best and how to develop such programs for maximum effectiveness.

This paper summarizes evidence on six perceptions associated with cash transfer programming, using eight rigorous evaluations conducted on large-scale government unconditional cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa under the Transfer Project.

Alternative scenarios are considered for reducing by one billion the number of people surviving on less than $1.25 a day. The low-case, “pessimistic” path to that goal envisages the developing world outside China returning to the slower pace of economic growth and poverty reduction of the 1980s and 1990s, but with China maintaining its progress. This path would take 50 years or more to lift one billion people out of poverty. A more optimistic path is identified that would maintain the developing world's (impressive) progress against absolute poverty since the turn of the century.

The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has given a new urgency to efforts to confront deficits in employment. We take up the call to improve the working conditions of informal workers who face being left behind given that processes of formalisation are unlikely to incorporate them in the near term in many countries. Indeed, there is evidence that levels of informal employment are increasing. We stress the heterogeneity of the informal workforce in terms of, firstly, different types of workers (e.g.

The rapid transformation of agri-food value chains in Africa and other developing countries hasimportant implications for economic growth and poverty reduction. Policy makers increasinglyrecognize this but there is a need for a better understanding of what value chain transformationentails and what the main policy options are. This paper provides an overview and analysis ofdifferent value chain models that have emerged in the past decades and reviews the literatureon the main development implications.

Universalism is at the core of the human development approach. Human freedoms must be enlarged for all human beings—not a few, not the most, but all, in every corner of the world—to be able to realize their full potential now and in the future. The same spirit is shared by the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals—leaving no one out. So human development must be ensured for everyone.

Today, about 783 million people live in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is primarily a rural phenomenon, with 80 percent of the extreme poor living in rural areas, across greatly diverse rural landscapes. Despite great progress in poverty reduction, the standard of living of the poorest of the poor has remained almost unchanged in the past 35 years, signaling that a huge gap in policy making and programmatic approaches are leaving them behind.

A rapidly urbanizing world presents enormous economic opportunities for the poor and vulnerable but also presents significant barriers to their economic inclusion. About two thirds of the world’s population is expected to live in urban centers by 2050, with nearly 90 percent of this increase in Asia and Africa. Section two is a summary of the urban context and challenges. Section three then describes a framework for fostering urban economic inclusion, and section four examines the current landscape of economic inclusion programs, starting with the policy

With the support of the MetLife Foundation, Trickle Up delivered a multidimensional intervention with elements of financial inclusion to economically empower vulnerable and marginalized women in Bangladesh, Mexico, and Vietnam. In Mexico, the project Empowering Women and Youth through the Graduation Approach and Financial Inclusion was contracted in September 2017, but due to operational and contextual challenges was implemented between July 2018 and May 2021 among indigenous communities in the states of Chiapas and Yucatan.

Many policies attempt to help extremely poor households build sustainable sources of income. Although economic interventions have predominated historically, psychosocial support has attracted substantial interest, particularly for its potential cost-effectiveness. Recent evidence has shown that multi-faceted ‘graduation’ programmes can succeed in generating sustained changes. Here we show that a multi-faceted intervention can open pathways out of extreme poverty by relaxing capital and psychosocial constraints.

Behavioral science-the study of how humans make decisions and take actions—can provide insight into a host of issues that impact the effectiveness of programs that rely on people acting in certain ways. Behavioral science can be utilized to understand how living in poverty, with chronically scarce resources, affects people's decisions and actions.

This note is one of two designed to
serve as a resource for policy makers and practitioners
aiming to introduce or scale up economic inclusion programs
in urban and peri-urban areas. The first note explores the
potential of economic inclusion programs to promote the
social and economic inclusion of the urban poor and
vulnerable. It lays out a framework for such programming
based on the current landscape and evidence and points to
the central role economic inclusion programs can play in

A multi-faceted program comprising a grant of productive assets, training, unconditional cash transfers, coaching, and savings has been found to build sustainable income for those in extreme poverty. We focus on two important questions: whether a mere grant of productive assets would generate similar impacts (it does not), and whether access to a savings account with a deposit collection service would generate similar impacts (it does, but they are short-lived).