With nearly 420 million children reached worldwide, school meals are among the largest-scale social protection interventions. This paper traces the evolution of school meals programs globally, examines the empirical evidence underpinning them, reviews select implementation practices with an...

The report on the indexation of benefits within the adaptive social protection (ASP) framework underscores the importance of linking cash transfers to inflation to maintain their adequacy amidst changing economic conditions. It analyzes 232 non-contributory cash transfer programs across 158...

Energy subsidies, which have a long history of use by governments around the world, have been rising in recent years after a brief period of decline. Despite their significant wider costs, subsidies are used by governments for various policy, and political, reasons. Faced with recent external...

The multiplier effects of cash transfers are receiving renewed attention globally. The existence of multipliers-or the generation of additional dollars for every one dollar injected as cash transfers-illuminates new aspects of the impacts of social assistance and holds the potential to redefine...

The pandemic-induced lockdowns and the global recession of 2020 that followed have created a highly uncertain global outlook. Globalization is stalling, social cohesion is being eroded by unrest and political polarization, and the still-unfolding economic crisis is threatening the livelihoods of...

As of January 2022, a total of 3,856 social protection and labor measures were planned or implemented by 223 economies. This constitutes a net increase of 523 measures, or 15.6 percent since the last update in May 2021. While noteworthy, such increase is the lowest among net additions observed...

A leading economist recently stated that "food security may be the defining global challenge of the Century." And in underscoring the importance of social protection, the head of an international organization declared that "[w]e must recognize, share, scale up and build on these successful...

This note provides an update of social protection responses to the food, fuel, fertilizer, and other price shocks sparked or accelerated by the Ukraine war. The vast majority of measures were introduced in early 2022 (February-April), although some specific interventions to mitigate prices were...

Is Coronavirus (Covid-19) a "game changer" for cash transfers? This tantalizing question has animated a large body of recent literature and over 60 virtual panels. This paper offers some clues to address the question by bringing together data, evaluations and practical experiences generated over...