The article’s subject is social protection in the Arab world. Giving the example of Egypt, it asks why poverty is so widespread and why – despite the country’s numerous sophisticated social protection systems – social risks are a major contributing factor to it. It concludes that reforms...

Due to the modernisation of societies, traditional social security systems are getting weaker and less reliable. The state must therefore step in and provide social protection to its citizens. Whether they effectively do or not depends on their financial and technical capacities adn on the...

Most countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region spend a considerable share of their national income on social protection. In Egypt and Jordan, for example, this share ranges between 20 and 25 %. Most of the money, however, is used for social protection instruments that suffer...

The majority of people in the informal sector have no access to reliable social protection schemes. This holds for the Arab countries just like for other parts of the developing world despite the fact that several Arab countries have made attempts to raise the share of households covered by...

Social partners, trade unions and employer associations have been involved in most changes to the corporatist welfare state of Germany. In 2001, the government enacted a pension reform to replace the generous but - due to demographic constraints - unsustainable pay-as-you-go public pension...

This paper investigates the fiscal pressure from demographic change in relation to the labour marketspace for fifty countries that cover 75% of the world population. The pressure-to-space indicator ranks Poland, Turkey and Greece high. Apart from Turkey and India, developing countries rank low...

For more than 25 years, the Social Security Trust Fund has been projected to run out of money in 2033 (give or take a few years), potentially causing benefits to be severely reduced in the absence of corrective legislative action. Today (February 2024), projections are made by the Social...

This paper analyses Egypt's social protection systems. It asks why poverty is so widespread and why – despite the country's numerous sophisticated social protection systems - social risks are a major contributing factor to poverty in Egypt. It concludes that reforms are due. The existing...