The question of how much governments should spend on social programs generally, or safety nets in particular, is of great obvious interest to policymakers but is extremely difficult to address empirically. The approach in this paper differs from others by assuming that what governments can...

Recent trends in trade, technology, and politics have created new opportunities for global welfare improvement, but have also increased risks. This challenge requires rethinking social protection, and its instruments, particularly social funds. This paper reviews social funds, and suggests...

The study reports evidence based on recent evaluation of active labor market programs, in developed countries, as well as on developing, and transition economies. While a number of unresolved technical issues, and a variety of data problems in specific surveys, and administrative information,...

Population ageing will impose a significant burden on European fiscal balances, in particular through pay-as-you-go pension systems. This study presents an independent estimate of this burden for the euro area, and quantifies the impact of two reform scenarios. Based on widely used, but...

Current statistics on child labor are generally based on economically active children. This paper will argue that these figures are not a workable proxy for data on child labor, generating numbers of child laborers, and their gender composition that do not represent the group described by the...

The paper is intended to provide an orientation to the past and present work of the Social Development network and a contribution to its future strategy. It presents a brief overview of the history of the Social Development network or family; it illustrates both continuity and change in the way...

This report serves as a conceptual background piece for the development of the Social Strategy Paper (SSP). To develop the conceptual underpinnings, the objectives and instruments of strategy papers (SP) are viewed under the rubric of Social Risk Management (SRM). SRM consists of public measures...

The study debates on active labor market programs (ALMPs) as a valuable employment policy tool intended to increase the quality of labor supply, and demand, versus the disincentive, and dependent passive measures in combating unemployment. While ALMPs have been implemented to varying degrees in...

This paper is an attempt to shed some light on issues relating to social protection in transition countries, emerging from ethnic conflict. It analyzes how constraints posed both by conflict itself, and its ethnic nature, affect social protection policies, and suggests ways out. Both conflict,...

The paper identifies key labor market and institutional differences between developed and developing countries, analyzes how these differences affect the working of the standard, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)-style unemployment insurance (UI) program, and derives...