"Concerns about incentives and targeting naturally arise when cash transfers are used to fight poverty. The authors address these concerns in the context of China's Di Bao program, which uses means-tested transfers to try to assure that no registered urban resident has an income below a...

The role and relevance of Social Fund Community-Driven Development (SF/CDD) has been highly debated in the international development community. Some conceive these programs only as parallel and temporary arrangements that can ensure short-term delivery of development benefits. Others emphasize...

This report proposes a toolkit which can be used to produce national assessments in MENA countries. The toolkit consists of a series of four questionnaires to be completed by institutions delivering specific programs in the areas of Social Assistance, Social Insurance, Health and Education. A...

Tanzania has made significant economic progress in the recent past, with per capita national income almost doubling from United States (U.S.) 230 dollars equivalent in the late-1990s to U.S. 440 dollars. This report explores the role safety nets and transfers can play in reducing poverty more...

The vision of Pakistan's social protection strategy to reach the poor and vulnerable (2007) is 'to develop an integrated and comprehensive social protection system, covering all the population, but especially the poorest and the most vulnerable'. Consistent with this vision, the goals of the...

This note on social protection has as its objective establishing an exhaustive analysis/diagnosis of the existing social protection framework and of preparing an integrated approach through developing better social protection priorities and plans of actions. It a) identifies the social risks...

"This paper relies on a simple framework to understand the gender wage gap in Macedonia, and simulates how the gender wage gap would behave after the introduction of a minimum wage. First, it presents a new - albeit simple - decomposition of the wage gap into three factors: (i) a wage level...

"Despite the existence of minimum wage legislation in most Latin American countries, there is little empirical evidence demonstrating its impact on the distribution of wages. In this study the authors analyze cross-country data for 19 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries to gain an...

"Minimum wages are generally thought to be unenforceable in developing rural economies. But there is one solution - a workfare scheme in which the government acts as the employer of last resort. Is this a cost-effective policy against poverty? Using a microeconometric model of the casual labor...