In this paper the authors analyze the relationship between personal opinions about the social security system and levels of informal employment using data from a recent household survey carried out in Bulgaria. They compare different indicators of job informality, focusing on the lack of social...

Portability of social benefits across professions and countries is an increasing concern for individuals and policy makers. Lacking or incomplete transfers of acquired social rights are feared to negatively impact individual labor market decisions as well as capacity to address social risks with...

Developing countries have responded to the multiple shocks from the food, fuel and finance crises of 2008-2009 with a mix of responses aimed at both mitigating the immediate impacts of the crises on households (and particularly children), and protecting future investments in human capital. While...

Risk and its consequences pose a formidable threat to poverty reduction efforts. This study reviews a plethora of community-based risk management arrangements across the developing world. These types of arrangements are garnering greater interest in light of the growing recognition of the...

This paper demonstrates that there are potentially large returns to having a social protection policy that stakes out a productive safety net below the vulnerable and keeps them from slipping into a poverty trap. Much of the value of the productive safety net comes from mitigating the ex ante...

The portability of pension rights is an increasingly important issue in the Caribbean. The large and increasing flows of migrant workers, including both permanent and temporary migrants, the small size of the domestic economies and the process of regional integration and economic openness call...

This paper provides a framework for analyzing the efficiency and equity of survivor benefit programs. These programs were originally designed to support families when the main wage-earner died, in an era where women rarely worked, fertility rates were high, and widows were unable to support...

In the last century most countries have experienced both an increase in pension spending and a decline in fertility. The authors argue that the interplay of pension generosity and development of capital markets is crucial to understand fertility decisions. Since children have traditionally...

Pension indexation should anchor the parameters of the pension system to one or more economic and demographic variables to ensure that the system is implemented in a sustainable way, while minimizing distortions affecting important economic choices. Arguing that financial sustainability,...

This toolkit is intended to provide a concise but thorough resource for social protection practitioners on how to minimize error, fraud and corruption in their program(s). It is organized in five sections. The first section introduces the topic, by clarifying the key concepts and spelling out...