This note provides an update of social protection responses to the food, fuel, fertilizer, and other price shocks sparked or accelerated by the Ukraine war. The vast majority of measures were introduced in early 2022 (February-April), although some specific interventions to mitigate prices were...

Some key finds from this "living paper" include : As of April 23, 2020, a total of 151 countries (18 more since last week) have planned, introduced or adapted 684 social protection measures in response to COVID-19 (Coronavirus). This is a ten-fold increase in measures since the first edition of...

The unprecedented and ongoing scale-up of social protection responses to the COVID-19 pandemic dwarf the response to the Great Recession. But how are countries financing such scale-up efforts? This note lays out ten stylized findings from a rapid review of social protection financing sources in...

Poverty and crises are rapidly “urbanizing†. Yet experience with operationalizing cash transfers in urban areas is limited. This paper captures early lessons from a new generation of urban cash transfer responses to Covid-19 in eleven African countries. The analysis contextualizes...

Adaptive social protection (ASP) helps to build the resilience of poor and vulnerable households to the impacts of large, covariate shocks, such as natural disasters, economic crises, pandemics, conflict, and forced displacement. Through the provision of transfers and services directly to these...

As of January 2022, a total of 3,856 social protection and labor measures were planned or implemented by 223 economies. This constitutes a net increase of 523 measures, or 15.6 percent since the last update in May 2021. While noteworthy, such increase is the lowest among net additions observed...

The multiplier effects of cash transfers are receiving renewed attention globally. The existence of multipliers - or the generation of additional dollars for every one dollar injected as cash transfers - illuminates new aspects of the impacts of social assistance and holds the potential to...

By many measures, the Dominican Republic experienced a stellar economic performance since the early 2000s. Upon closer inspection, however, progress has been slower than the aggregate indicators suggest. The fact that economic growth did not fully translate into higher job quality may help...

This study examines the role of social protection programming, and programming design and implementation features, that are prominent in fragile and conflict-affected states. The main objective is to build on existing, available information from a sample of fragile and conflict-affected...

This book chronicles the development of Vietnam's rural electrification program. It tells the story of how the Vietnamese government conceived, developed, scaled up, and improved its program. It also discusses the role the government, the countries main utility, local authorities, local...