The authors consider the question of what role safety net transfers should play in very low income countries where a large population live in absolute poverty, and the state has limited resources to fund transfers. The number of people living below minimum acceptable consumption levels will...

This study focuses on internationally accepted labor standards and norms governing the individual employment contract, including International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions and recommendations, European Union (EU) labor standards, and the European community social charter. The study also...

This paper surveys many aspects and issues of child labor, including its causes and effects as well as policies associated with it. Child labor has come to be considered an expression of poverty, both a cause and an effect of underdevelopment. Child labor cannot be viewed in isolation from...

This paper proposes a new definition, and conceptual framework for social protection, grounded in social risk management. The concept repositions the traditional areas of social protection (labor market intervention, social insurance, and social safety nets) in a framework that includes three...

This review identifies over sixty countries that have or had pre-employment and enterprise training funds. The characteristics, advantages, and limitations of each are presented as well as key design questions and examples of good practice. National training funds are an increasingly common...

This report provides a description of the diversity of current policies towards the family across the European Union and an account of the current"state of the art"on the effects of these policies on demographic and labor market behavior. There is an implicit assumption that the tax and benefit...

This report provides a set of preliminary hypotheses and exploratory econometric testing to explain low rates of participation in reformed social security systems, with special emphasis on two Latin American countries. The hypotheses claim that the working poor and self-employed continue to have...

The review's objective is to assess the evolution of the social funds portfolio, with a specific focus on the fiscal years 2000 to 2007, and the portfolio's role in the implementation of the Social Protection Sector Strategy (SPSS). Lending trends, the evolution of the social funds model, and...

While targeting can effectively channel resources to the poor, implementation details matter tremendously to distributive outcomes. This report conducts an in-depth assessment of key design and implementation factors and their potential impact on outcomes for household targeting systems in six...

The causes and consequences of child labor are examined within a household decision framework with survival uncertainty and endogenous fertility. The data come from a nationally representative survey of Indian rural households. The complex interactions uncovered by the analysis suggest that mere...