Practitioners from different disciplines use different meanings and concepts of vulnerability, which, in turn, have led to diverse methods of measuring it. This paper presents a selective review of the literature from several disciplines to examine how they define and measure vulnerability. The...

Non-farm household enterprises are important for a number of reasons to do with poverty and employment creation. They could either be the first unit of microentrepreneurship or a coping strategy for the poorest. Either way, over 11 percent of India's prime working age population is self-employed...

This paper investigates how enforcement of labor regulation affects firm size and other firm characteristics in Brazil. The authors explore firm level data on employment, capital, and output, city level data for economic city characteristics and new administrative data measuring enforcement of...

This paper gives an overview on current demographic trends and projected population change in Europe and neighboring regions. The main focus of the analysis is on Western and Central Europe. Today this world region has a total population of 500 million. Available forecasts until the year 2050...

This paper investigates the hypothesis that children work because their income contribution is necessary for the household to meet subsistence expenditures. It uses the fact that a testable implication of this hypothesis is that the wage elasticity of child labor supply is negative. Previous...

This paper deals with how social safety nets may reach the poor with disabilities in developing countries. It presents a framework for analyzing the inclusion of disability in social safety nets. The paper first reviews evidence on the relation between disability and poverty, and, discusses the...

The report reviews the performance of various income support systems for the unemployed, and provides guidelines for developing and transition economies. It finds that: a) Unemployment insurance enables a high degree of consumption smoothing, performs well under various types of shocks, and acts...

With the recovery from the recent crisis, countries of the East Asia and Pacific region are rethinking their financial, and social policy, including old-age protection. Population aging, in combination with ongoing urbanization, and economic transformation, will place increasing pressure on...

The main objective of this paper is to review the regulatory framework for pension funds, and examine whether there is scope for improvements in pension regulation, particularly in light of regulatory and supervisory developments in the banking industry. The report is structured as follows: The...

The aim of this paper is to provide some guidance on how to carry out a social protection (SP) expenditure, performance and finance review - given the absence of social protection in public expenditure review (PER) work to date. Such a review will enable countries (i) to better use their SP...