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,...

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...

This study investigates the contribution of Mozambique's flagship social pension programme, the Programa de Subsídio Social Básico, to building resilience against shocks. Applying a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach to bespoke survey data, we separate direct effects of programme...

Botswana's welfare state is both a parsimonious laggard in comparison with some other middle-income countries in Africa (such as Mauritius and South Africa) and extensive (in comparison with its low-income neighbours to the north and east). Coverage is broad but cash transfers are modest. This...

How social protection programmes affect work choices is a question that has been at the centre of labour economics research for decades. More recently, a scant literature has focused on the effects of social protection on work choices and informal employment in the context of low- and...

There is scant analysis on the causal relationship between fiscal capacity and social protection expenditure in the developing world. We investigate the causal relationship between fiscal capacity of the state and social protection expenditure, hypothesizing that fiscal capacity is necessary but...

This study assesses the effectiveness of Mozambique's flagship social pension programme, the elderly component of the Programa de Subsídio Social Básico (PSSB). Focusing on three key criteria- programme targeting, reliability, and materiality-we combine administrative data on the universe of...

This paper undertakes an empirical analysis of the adoption of various components of social security systems as well as contribution rates. Apart from economic determinants of the adoption, the empirical analysis features determinants relating to countries' political systems and contagion. We...