First published in 1948, the International Social Security Review is the principal international quarterly publication in the field of social security.
Migration affects almost every nation, emphasizing the need to guarantee social security rights for all migrants and their families. This article focuses on the rights of workers who migrate between the countries of the European Union (EU) and the Ibero-American Community. In the EU, social security systems are increasingly coordinated through Regulation No. 883/2004 and its Implementing Regulation No. 987/2009. In the Ibero-American Community, coordination is sought through the Ibero-American Social Security Convention. Despite convergence between these two international instruments, coordination is still lacking between them. This article presents a comparative analysis to articulate the necessary mechanisms to guarantee coordination, to respect the social security rights of migrant workers. We focus on the cooperation and coordination between regional as well as national systems, specifically looking at the need for and aims of a rapprochement between these two major international coordination instruments to provide greater Euro-Ibero-American cooperation. Finally, the importance of promoting greater international cooperation in social security policy and administration is highlighted, to engender the adequate protection of the rights as well as the free movement of migrant workers.
After a decade of unprecedented austerity, Greece abruptly changed the course of pension consolidation in 2022 and implemented the controversial carve-out pension funding approach, whereby a portion of existing pay-as-you-go (PAYG) contributions are diverted to fund individual pension savings, thus undermining the financing of existing PAYG pensions. Although inspired by the World Bank’s 1994 pension privatization blueprint, the Greek 2022 reform features a major policy shift by entrusting the management of individual pension savings to a dedicated government body, ostensibly to try to remedy inherent market failures in private pension provision. Similar to earlier reforms in Eastern Europe, the multi-decade transition costs of carve-out funding have been vastly underestimated in Greece, which will give rise to fiscal distress in the coming years when annual transition costs become sizeable and favourable international financing terms start to change. Unless firm political commitment is established to implement the measures necessary to finance the transition costs, Greece may have to resort to reform reversals similar to those already implemented across Eastern Europe.
Limited evidence on the design and implementation of social protection programmes for people with disabilities in low- and middle-income countries constrains understanding of how their impacts could be improved. The Disability Allowance programme in the Maldives is a non means-tested, monthly cash transfer targeting people with disabilities. Using qualitative methods, process evaluation was used to examine the intervention design, implementation, and likelihood of achieving its intended objectives. There were important strengths of the programme, including the broad definition of disability. We find that delivery could be strengthened through providing greater clarity on eligibility criteria and strengthening human resources to widen the programme’s reach. Intervention fidelity was challenged by inconsistent practice among implementers and lack of established protocols. Most importantly, the absence of linkages with the Medical Welfare scheme that provides assistive devices potentially limits the likelihood of the programme achieving intended objectives.
China has adopted an array of special social security measures in response to the spread of the COVID-19 virus, to mitigate the downside social and economic impacts caused by the pandemic. Measures include the reduction, exemption and deferral of social security contributions by employers, the extension of benefits coverage for employees, and the provision of more accessible e-services by social insurance agencies. The article points out that a preliminary assessment of those measures would suggest that they have played a key role in supporting social cohesion and in stabilising the economy. In a critical manner, the article compares the measures adopted in China with those of other countries, and identifies how China could learn from international practice and experience. Finally, and based on recent Chinese experience, the article presents proposals that seek to improve the longer-term contribution made by the Chinese social security system to realise the goals of social cohesion and inclusive economic development. As set out in China’s Social Insurance Law of 2010, the social security system should not only support a fair sharing of benefits of development, but also promote social harmony and stability.
The importance of the cross-border portability of social benefits is increasing in parallel with the rise in the absolute number of international migrants and their share of the world population, and perhaps more importantly with the much higher and rising share of the world population that for some part of their life is working and/or retiring abroad. This article estimates how the rising stock of migrants is distributed over four key portability regimes ranging from portability through bilateral social security arrangements to undocumented workers with no access to any scheme. The comparison of estimates for 2000 and 2013 indicate a modest but noticeable increase in the share of migrants under regime I (full portability) by 1.4 per cent, but the biggest change occurred under regime III (no access to social security but also no contributions required), which almost doubled to 9.4 per cent. Regime II (potential exportability without totalization) reduced by 3.0 percentage points but remains the dominant scheme (at 53.2 per cent). The estimates suggest that the scope of regime IV (informality) reduced by 2.9 percentage points, accounting for 14.0 per cent of all migrants in 2013. This trend is positive, but more will need to be done to progress on benefit portability and various potential solutions lie outside bilateral agreements that are difficult to establish.
This special issue of the International Social Security Review considers the multidisciplinary topic of the digital economy and social security. The selected articles that comprise this issue offer a number of varying perspectives on the changing and increasingly complex environment in which social security institutions operate and critically assess not only how social security institutions are likely to be impacted but also how they may respond to the challenges foreseen. Social security institutions do not have control over external factors that can negatively impact the financing and coverage of social security programmes. Nonetheless, with the shift to the digital economy, the task at hand is to manage an unprecedented process of change. Though ensuring service continuity is the primary concern, also required are improvements in service delivery for all stakeholders and the development of responses to meet new operational challenges and emerging coverage risks. Particularly in more developed economies, the socio-economic challenges that accompany the labour market changes associated with the transition to the digital economy are often characterized as threatening a risk of growing precarity. Regardless, the global policy goal remains one of ensuring sustainable and adequate social security protection for all.
The Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA – Försäkringskassan) and its frontline staff have a key role in the implementation of activation policy. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at local offices, this article investigates how the transparency ideal, as an integral part of the organizational governance of the activation policy, is negotiated and enacted in the everyday life of a welfare bureaucracy. The analysis shows the central role that the transparency ideal plays in the alignment of frontline staff with the normative regime of the agency. While the transparency ideal is central to the internal organizational life of the SSIA, the analysis shows how transparency is much less salient in relation to clients and other relations with the outside world.
Since the inception of the European Employment Strategy in 1997, individualized employment support has been a key priority of the European Union and its Member States. Nevertheless, empirical research on the delivery of individualized services for the unemployed is still underdeveloped. In this article, we explore how local employment agencies in three European cities tailor counselling and services to individual jobseekers’ needs. We find that limited service budgets and underdeveloped organizational interfaces with social service providers tend to constrain the substantive individualization of services in practice, which works in the disfavour of vulnerable jobseekers. Individualized counselling is more widespread, at least for selected target groups. However, organizational capacities for offering individualized problem assessment and advice vary considerably across “worlds of individualization” in Europe.
This themed issue contributes to European research on the role of front-line work in the implementation of welfare-to-work policies. A number of factors underline the relevance of such study. First, the focus on activating and disciplining the unemployed seen in many countries may on the surface look similar. However, a closer look at these policies and how they unfold in different contexts reveals many and interesting differences. While all contain a certain level of disciplining and coercive elements, they also to a varying degree contain elements that focus on the upgrading of skills, building human capital and providing other types of support in promoting labour-market participation. In turn, these policies contain both people processing and people changing technologies that are used for different aspects of policy delivery. In addition, policy developments have gradually expanded the client group of these policies, including more hard-to-place unemployed, thus making the client group more heterogeneous. Finally, we have seen a strong political belief in the positive effects of using punitive sanctions. Research supports this belief when it comes to clients with high employability and limited problems besides unemployment, but the knowledge-base is rather shaky when it comes to the hard-to-place clients with substantial problems. Using punitive sanctions or other disciplining or coercive measures in frontline work has caused controversy and resistance. In order to qualify our understanding of welfare-to-work policies, we need to take a step closer to where these policies are translated into reality for the target group.
Although policy-makers and scholars have directed increasing attention towards collaborative innovation and knowledge development between frontline agencies and workers and other stakeholders such as citizens and researchers, empirical research has not focused on the (varying) assessment of collaborators regarding what knowledge is “appropriate” to develop. In this article, we examine such knowledge assessments by drawing on a comparative case study of two local innovation projects conducted by the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) in a four-year service innovation programme. Although they responded to the same call, the projects involved development of two very distinct types of knowledge; one dealt with practice-based knowledge and the other with evidence-based knowledge. We show that whereas the former knowledge type was contested and difficult to transform into practice, the latter prompted few (if any) challenges and was implemented on a relatively large scale. These two projects point to the possible existence of a hierarchy of knowledge in the labour and welfare services, where evidence-based forms of knowledge and methods are regarded as more legitimate and appropriate than forms of knowledge placed “lower” in the hierarchy. We discuss the reasons for and implications of this apparent hierarchy of knowledge for frontline labour and welfare services.
Recent years have witnessed the significant expansion of social protection programmes around the world. Yet, a vast number of poor and vulnerable people, including children, women, ethnic minorities, and persons with disabilities, remain uncovered, especially in lower-income countries. This article argues that a better understanding of the principle of equality and non-discrimination, as defined under international human rights law, can guide practitioners and policy-makers to design and implement more inclusive social protection systems. Compliance with this principle is also necessary under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the International Labour Organization’s social security standards. The article first analyses the scope and content of the legal principle of equality and non-discrimination, giving attention to the standards commonly used to assess compliance with it. It then applies these standards as analytical tools to assess how and when discrimination may occur in the implementation of non-contributory social protection programmes. Finally, it explores the challenges that social protection practitioners face when applying the principle of equality and non-discrimination in social protection programmes.
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 asserts that social security is an inalienable human right. Realizing this human right is often considered, simply, as a matter of political will and of administrative aptitude. In these terms, the progressive realization of the human right to social security may be viewed as the outcome of an appropriately-resourced political and bureaucratic process. Such a perspective, however, is clearly inadequate. Characteristically, bureaucracies are designed to cater to the needs of all, based on common procedures and common deliverables designed for the “typical” case. Yet such approaches often lack the necessary flexibility and resources to make a distinction between individuals, which acknowledge their respective differences and needs. To meet the international commitment to progressively realize universal social security coverage, social security administrations are key actors. However imperative this role may be, if the pursuit of this commitment fails to respect people’s differences this will put at risk the meeting in full of what is envisioned by the human right to social security. To this end, this special issue aims to foster an understanding that the goal of universal coverage must necessarily also respect and respond to the individual needs of each and every person.
To support the improved administration of social security programmes, this article presents a preliminary compliance risk management (CRM) model for social security institutions to use as a tool to help address the operational challenges of error, evasion and fraud. Within the model, error, evasion and fraud are collectively referred to as issues of non‐compliance. The model's framework addresses non‐compliance in an integrated manner with regard to the main functions of contribution collection and benefit administration. The model aims to facilitate tackling these important issues by better permitting the identified challenges to be prioritized and, thereafter, addressed based on the assessed severity of their impacts and the cost‐effectiveness of the selected responses. Three generic types of intervention are recommended to tackle non‐compliance worldwide: prevention, detection and deterrence. The article's objective is to contribute to ongoing work to develop an encompassing CRM framework for all social security systems.
More often than not, the existing modes of contribution collection and benefit payment of social security organizations are adapted to the collective arrangements that characterize employer‐employee relationships. Extending coverage to individuals in difficult‐to‐reach groups, however, may require new modalities of service that can cope with many separate, secure transactions rather than a few bulk data transfers between organizations. Recent developments in electronic payment show its wide applicability in enabling huge volumes of such individual transactions. It is in this light that the article explores the potentials of this technology and identifies possible arrangements through which electronic payments could surmount barriers that stand in the way of covering difficult‐to‐reach groups. The high level of mobile phone penetration on a global scale augurs well for using e‐payment mechanisms to collect social security contributions and to deliver social security benefits and services. A generic model is used to describe the requisite elements to implement electronic payments in social protection programmes. Based on empirical evidence of current social protection practices from around the world, five scenarios are presented to describe possible configurations for electronic payment, from the simplest to the most sophisticated. The broader objective is to contribute in a practical manner to the international commitment to extend social protection to all, as defined by the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
In the first decade of transition, the Georgian social protection system experienced a major retrenchment as the government struggled to finance welfare provision in the face of massive economic contraction and the near collapse of public institutions. Since 2004, this trend has been reversed, with the economy returning to a fast growth path and public administration improving considerably. Recent reforms, including the notable introduction of universal public health insurance, are welcome steps towards building a modern welfare state. Major challenges still remain, however, especially in relation to the system’s limited effect on widespread poverty. Decelerating growth, the lack of strong pro-welfare actors, and the absence of positive external pull factors may stall or prevent future growth, but the changing nature of the social contract between the people and government, as well as Georgian politicians’ growing recognition of the importance of the welfare system for inclusive growth, leaves ample space for optimism.
The possession and use of a personal social security number helps to structure people’s daily lives. However, despite its fundamental normative importance, the social security number remains a little-known entity. Increasingly universal and yet diverse in form, it is a legal and technical norm which is as much a mechanism for surveillance and monitoring as it is a necessary instrument for giving effect to social rights. Analysis of this constituent element of social security systems permits as assessment of some of the technical difficulties presented by the ever-increasing movement of people and data. Overcoming these technical difficulties should permit to envisage a first technical step towards realizing a universal and global social security system.
The concept of nudge theory, from the fields of behavioural science, political theory and behavioural economics, has sparked government initiatives yielding significant public value. A nudge is a method for predictably altering behaviour without restricting consumer choice options or significantly changing incentives. Nudges work by leveraging default human behaviour such as the tendency to take the path of least resistance when exercising choice. Government agencies have run many successful trials with simple textual nudges designed to positively influence behaviours such as tax compliance, voter registration and student attrition. This article develops the concept of the digital nudge in social security administration. The digital nudge leverages predictive analytics technology within a digital government framework to support a social investment policy approach. Based on a literature review of nudges within a digital government context, the article identifies examples of innovation within social security administration where nudges are contributing to better social outcomes. At the same time, concerns regarding ethics and privacy are identified as nudges are applied at the individual rather than the population level. The use of data and personal information to drive the nudge process has to be managed in such a way that individual rights are protected. This requirement has to be reconciled with the broader interests of society in achieving affordable outcomes, the parameters of which are determined through the political process.
Social security systems around the world evolved at different times, at different speeds, for often very different needs. But now each country faces a universal truth: their social security organizations must be truly adaptive, ready to deliver a new type of service at a time of constant technological and social change. Each social security system is approaching this daunting task in their own way – a grand social experiment in how agencies can provide a proactive, personalized service that meets their citizens’ ever-changing needs. The results are simply unknown. This article intends to start the debate on what is and is not working, and indeed on how agencies should measure their progress in moving away from the traditional transactional model. The challenges they face are immense. Populations are ageing and social security budgets are shrinking. Meanwhile, the pace of digital change is matched only by the soaring rate of customer expectations. But the opportunities are of similar scale. Advanced technology, automation and new partnerships between public-sector agencies promise a much smarter, more insight-driven service for all. Technology is only one side of this equation. As part of rethinking their entire mission, social security agencies will need new workers with new sets of skills, and for their existing workers to adapt and embrace their changing roles. None of this will be straightforward. Whatever the original purpose of the social security organization, it has now changed irrevocably. But with the right combination of talent and technology, agencies can aspire to a new model: one that is flexible enough to withstand economic and social shock and resilient enough for the challenges that lie ahead.
The article summarizes four corridor studies on bilateral social security agreements (BSSAs) between four European Union (EU) members that were undertaken to assess their working and the establishment of benefit portability. BSSAs between migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries are seen as the most important instrument to establish portability of social security benefits for internationally mobile workers. Yet, only about 23 per cent of international migrants profit from BSSAs and their functioning has been little analyzed and even less assessed. The four corridors studied (Austria-Turkey, Germany-Turkey, Belgium-Morocco, and France-Morocco) were selected to allow for comparison of both similarities and differences in experiences. The evaluation of these corridors’ BSSAs was undertaken against a methodological framework and three selected criteria: fairness for individuals, fiscal fairness for countries, and bureaucratic effectiveness for countries and migrant workers. The results for pension portability suggest that the investigated BSSAs work and overall deliver reasonably well on individual fairness. The results on fiscal fairness are clouded by conceptual and empirical gaps. Bureaucratic effectiveness would profit from information and communication technology-based exchanges on both corridors once available.
This 2016 special issue addresses the topic of excellence in social security administration. For the International Social Security Association, “excellence” is most usually associated with ensuring that the technical processes and administrative procedures that underpin the delivery of social security benefits and services are high-performing, well-governed and sustainable. But it also refers to the covered population’s perceptions of the quality and adequacy of the services and benefits provided. The academic literature on “social security” is immense, but the larger part of this published research addresses questions of social security theory and policy. The critical, analytical literature on social security administration, including that which marries theoretical analysis with the empirical evidence of administrative performance, is thus smaller. A major aim of this special issue is to make a contribution to redressing this imbalance. This is done not only to support and stimulate research that draws equally on empirical evidence and the theoretical literature, but in a very practical sense to better take into account and provide responses to the increasingly complex operational challenges facing social security administrations.