Although not characterized as a program designed to address the problems of poverty, Social Security, the linchpin of America's social welfare enterprise, impacts poverty more significantly than most of the usually identified anti-poverty programs. For examples, more children receive Social...

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 introductory article of this special issue looks at the genesis, characteristics and challenges of social protection schemes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It argues that social protection policies in the MENA should be seen as a key ingredient of the social contract that...

This paper provides a broad overview of welfare schemes in India and their impact on social protection during a period of high economic growth. It summarizes India's performance with respect to select economic and social indicators relative to select low and middle income countries in the Asia...

Redistribution across individuals in a one-year-period framework is an empirically intensely studied question. However, a substantial share of annual redistribution might turn out to serve individual insurance in a longer perspective, reducing the level of actual redistribution across...

Since 2000, Zimbabwe has been under some pressure to provide more fully for its children. It is not clear whether child poverty has worsened, although AIDS, drought, and economic mismanagement have all compromised poverty reduction. In any case, child poverty has come under increased scrutiny,...

Using a factor decomposition of the Gini coefficient we measure the contribution to inequality of direct monetary income flows to and from the Brazilian State. The income flows from the State include public servants' earnings, Social Security pensions, unemployment benefits and Social Assistance...