Having a birth certificate is a stepping stone to acquiring an array of rights and benefits, including other documents necessary to navigate in and outside of one's home country. Despite its importance, many children in the developing world never obtain a birth certificate. Whether one does so...

African populations need better support through social protection mechanisms. Among those who need social security are millions of older people who, having worked all their lives in the formal sector, are in precarious situations with lower benefits. This study aims to appreciate theoretically,...

This paper discusses past and current social policy strategies in the international aid architecture. From the 1990s, aid strategy and policy shifted to put a stronger emphasis on human development. This accelerated with the Millennium Development Goals and will continue under the Sustainable...

Revisiting foundational feminist work on the concept of empowerment from the 1980s and 1990s, this paper draws on the findings of a multi-country research programme, 'Pathways of Women's Empowerment', to explore pathways of positive change in women's lives, in diverse contexts, and to draw...

This paper explores the impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa on income poverty and inequality in South Africa. Using a static tax-benefit microsimulation model with input datasets that were adjusted to reflect people's earned incomes just before the pandemic (March...

In July 2020, the United Republic of Tanzania gained the status of a lower-middleincome country. This came after two decades of significant social policy reforms and transformations in the country's economic structures. This paper explores social policy trajectories in Mainland Tanzania with a...

This paper considers the case for universal child allowances in Ghana. It follows findings from an earlier study of 14 middle income countries that examined optimal approaches to reduce child poverty using universal categorical child allowances. The paper describes the demographic profiles that...