The Government of India is implementing a new policy which dramatically increases funding for a cash transfer program targeted to the poor elderly. The expansion of this 'social pension' in terms of coverage and benefit levels is taking place with little understanding of poverty among India's...

Given the prevalence of informal labor, most countries have combined contributory social insurance programs (pensions, unemployment benefits, and health insurance), with non-contributory insurance programs and several types of "safety nets." All of these programs involve different types of...

The Government of India is implementing a new policy which dramatically increases funding for a cash transfer program targeted to the poor elderly. The expansion of this ‘social pension’ in terms of coverage and benefit levels is taking place with little understanding of poverty among...

Population aging is typically associated with economic challenges for productivity and financial threats for the old-age financial protection system of a country. This paper takes an optimistic position and outlines key ingredients to make it a successful experience. Yet to turn this challenge...

This paper presents a World Bank led and Russia trust fund financed work program to measure financial capability and the effectiveness of financial education in low and middle income countries. The two activities and their staging have been motivated by the lessons of high-income countries with...

This paper demonstrates that the link between heterogeneity in longevity and lifetime income across countries is mostly high and often increasing; that it translates into an implicit tax/subsidy, with rates reaching 20 percent and higher in some countries; that such rates risk perverting...

Individuals' level of engagement on the labor market is hypothesized to be of critical importance for labor market outcomes. Based on a recent labor market survey in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), this paper develops an innovative index to measure individuals' labor market engagement across...

The importance of cross-border portability of social benefits is increasing in parallel with the rise in the absolute number of international migrants and their share of the world population, and perhaps more importantly, with the rising share of world population that for some part of their life...

In many policy areas it is essential to use the best estimates of life expectancy, but such estimates are vital to most areas of pension policy – from indexed access age and the calculation of initial benefits to the financial sustainability of pension schemes and the operation of their...

The paper investigates the demographic alternatives for dealing with the projected population aging and low or negative growth of the population and labor force in the North. Without further immigration, the total labor force in Europe and Russia, the high-income countries of East Asia and the...