The growing economic fissures in the societies of Europe and Central Asia between generations, between insiders and outsiders in the labor market, between rural and urban communities, and between the super-rich and everyone else, are threatening the sustainability of the social contract. The...

As the second largest African oil producer, Angola had unsustainable government expenditures in effect until 2014 due to the drop in international oil prices. The Government responded with a comprehensive reform program including the gradual elimination of most fuel subsidies and an extension of...

Demography affects our daily lives. Consciously or not, we take into account the demographic context when making choices on employment, savings, health, and education. This report studies how demographic change is likely to affect demand for social services in Southern Africa and how today's...

Almost half the population remain poor, but the proportion has increased in rural areas and decreased in urban areas. Poverty stands at 48.6 percent nationally and almost 70 percent in rural areas; 21.3 percent are extreme poor, rising to 32.2 percent in rural areas5. The poverty rate hasn't...

Pakistan's social protection system is still in a nascent stage of development and so is the country's fiscal and institutional architecture for inter-governmental relations. In particular, the implicit devolution of social protection and related functions in the eighteenth constitutional...

Although Cambodia has become one of the world's leaders in poverty reduction, two-thirds of its population remains poor or economically vulnerable, with a large number of households moving in and out of poverty. Cambodian households are exposed to a range of shocks that can have devastating...

The Social Assistance Scheme (SAS) is the main social assistance program in Kosovo and the sole program targeted at poverty reduction in Kosovo and, importantly, the only program in which household income and assets are used to identify beneficiaries. In the absence of SAS, the overall poverty...