First published in 1948, the International Social Security Review is the principal international quarterly publication in the field of social security.
During the COVID-19 pandemic there were a great many social protection policy responses. There were also calls for emergency basic income (EBI) to be adopted as a mitigation response. However, it seems that only one country adopted an EBI. Nonetheless, EBI is likely to feature in future policy discussion and action, especially as a crisis-mitigation tool. This has implications for the future of rights-based social protection. Consequently, this article aims to examine whether EBI would comply with international social security standards and whether it could contribute to building and strengthening rights-based universal social protection systems.
Advancements in technology enable new opportunities for creating digital social security accounts, but the effectiveness of these to solve the accessibility and eligibility issues facing platform workers has not been assessed fully in the literature. The potential of digital social security accounts lies in their ability to consider the possible different streams of income of atypical workers and to improve the effective access of these workers to social security. Tax and social security offices can now exchange information on the income of platform workers in real time, which offers the promise of formalizing the previously informal casual work relationships of the self-employed. This article explores the case of the Estonian entrepreneur account as a digital hybrid solution for improving the effective access to social security of platform workers. Digital portable accounts create the conditions for the structural improvement required to respond adequately to meet the changing social security needs of atypical workers. However, this also requires that the policy design be thought through carefully, to avoid digital portable accounts being simply a digital facilitator of outdated solutions.
Using the Ghanaian LEAP benefit programme as a case study, we investigate how administrators, service personnel and beneficiaries perceive and respond to implementation dilemmas. The investigation focuses on the LEAP benefit for caregivers of children, which is conditional on children’s school attendance, health check‑ups and vaccinations. An ethical dilemma concerns whether non-compliance should be sanctioned, since this may push caregivers and their children deeper into poverty. Other dilemmas concern how administrative resources should be allocated for the targeting, monitoring, sanctioning and exiting of beneficiaries; how spending should be allocated between providing cash benefits and securing health and education services of sufficient quality; whether available money should be spread widely but thinly to provide incentives for many caregivers to send children to schools and attend health check-ups, or be targeted more narrowly to enhance relief for the very poorest; and whether funding would be less forthcoming if the minimum benefit was not a conditional cash transfer (CCT). We discuss whether similar dilemmas are likely to be present in other low- and middle-income countries operating similar CCTs, and whether some of these also apply to “active” minimum benefits implemented in high-income countries.
The Chinese social security system has been the subject of numerous publications, which have made policy developments more accessible to researchers and administrators from all countries. However, the steps introduced in response to growing demands for intervention by the authorities in favour of dependent persons have remained poorly documented in the international literature. The purpose of this article is to take stock of pilot experiments in this field since the beginning of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020) with regard to their policy objective, operating mode and financing modalities.
This article provides insights into methodological and measurement considerations and challenges from an actuarial and social security policy perspective with reference to actuarial valuation work undertaken in the recent period. It aims at supporting the global discussion to improve the transparency of the reporting of financial liabilities of social security schemes linked to employment-based obligations (contributory), as these are often guaranteed by the government following social security funding rules such as pay-as-you-go and partially funded approaches. The article supports the actuarial profession’s engagement with experts in national accounting and public finance statistics towards providing improved guidance to national governments in presenting a fair and accurate picture of the financial position of their social security schemes with due and unbiased recognition of the social security policy approach decision of any given country. While the reflection of the financial position of social security schemes guaranteeing long-term benefits payable for life is most important in terms of possible public finance implications, care must be exercised in adopting a valuation methodology and indicators that are not biased and which do not distort the interpretation of its financial position. In this respect, challenges remain and there is ample scope for refining methodologies and adopting coherent accounting approaches encompassing policy decisions for funding purposes.
The international statistical community has a growing interest in the liabilities of pension and social security systems. The System of National Accounts 2008 encourages countries to provide detailed information in a supplementary table on pensions. The IMF Government Finance Statistics Manual also encourages reporting of public-sector balance sheets as part of government debt, and the European Union (EU) has mandated that all EU Member States compile estimates of accrued-to-date (ADL) liabilities for all pensions, including public-sector pensions and social security schemes. The ADL liabilities for public-sector pensions, which are often defined benefit, and typically financed on an unfunded (pay-as-you-go) or partially funded basis, are likely to be very large in some countries, receive significant public scrutiny, and be misunderstood and/or misused. The article begins by reviewing the current requirements, disparity and ambiguity in existing accounting and actuarial standards. It notes the opportunities for “accounting arbitrage”, where countries can provide similar benefits in a different form to avoid placing these pension liabilities on the government balance sheet and/or to avoid required disclosure of pension liabilities. This article concludes that the ADL for social security and government-sponsored pension programmes has little or no meaning, does not provide any information about the fiscal sustainability of a country’s pension programmes and does not provide any useful information for comparing pension plans across countries. It argues that the best measure of fiscal sustainability for unfunded or partially funded pension programmes that are financed on a pay-as-you-go basis is the financing gap, and that this “open group” measure of fiscal sustainability should be published alongside the ADL, supplemented by information on coverage rates, replacement ratios and expenditures as a per cent of GDP. The article concludes that pension expenditures as a per cent of GDP is probably the single best measure for cross-country comparison.
To enable mutual health funds to extend coverage to poor people, the Mutual Health Support Network (Réseau d’appui aux mutuelles de santé – RAMS) in 2012 launched an initiative in collaboration with the Ministry of Social Action and Solidarity (ministère de l’Action sociale et de la Solidarité nationale – MASSN) in Burkina Faso. This article reveals difficulties in the initiative's implementation, which resulted in the continued exclusion of poor people from health services. Poor people were required not only to make co‐payments, but also to accept a limitation of coverage to three episodes of illness per year. Additional challenges to service takeup were the geographical distance of the homes of some beneficiaries covered by a mutual fund agreement from a health centre and the failure by some health workers and managers of pharmacies to recognize the mutual membership card. A formal framework was lacking that brought together all the actors involved in planning and implementing the initiative. Those involved did not all have the same information. Each structure performed the tasks within its scope, according to its own interests, but without consulting the other parties, and there was no platform for discussing implementation difficulties.
The article studies the causal effect of trust on the willingness to pay higher taxes to help the needy in a sample of 29 countries of Eastern and Southern Europe, and the former Soviet Union and Mongolia. It is hypothesized that interpersonal trust leads to a greater willingness to pay taxes to help the needy since (i) trust increases the likelihood of helping strangers; (ii) trust fosters solidarity and cooperation when working to solve common problems in society; and (iii) trust reduces suspicion with respect to the perceived misuse of redistributed money. Three key findings are that the more people trust each other, the more they are ready to support the welfare state; the effect of trust on welfare state support holds even in a contextual environment characterized by rather lower levels of trust and relatively underdeveloped systems of redistribution; and higher individual-level trust fosters tax morale and helps deter tax evasion.
This article evaluates the pension policy pathways of the 11 former state socialist nations that have joined the European Union since 2004. Focusing primarily on the post‐2004 period, the analysis discusses the most important measurable outcomes of these countries’ pension reforms, in terms of poverty alleviation, pension adequacy and fiscal sustainability. Going beyond the quantifiable concepts, we also investigate the quality of the 11 countries’ pension systems in terms of equity as well as efficiency, emphasizing the less conspicuous design errors present in these systems. Although these errors have received little attention to date, they may harm pension schemes along several dimensions, including their fiscal sustainability.
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.
As part of international efforts framed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to extend sustainable and adequate social security coverage, social security systems are increasingly looking to deliver holistic policy responses that meet the different needs of people across the life course. To achieve these objectives globally, not only must the design and goals of social security programmes be recalibrated but significant investments in the health workforce are required. Yet, a fundamental challenge is the current and projected mismatch between the global supply, demand, and need for health workers. A number of critical issues require attention: the need for more and better investments in the health workforce; recognition that the health workforce is not gender neutral and that policies that appropriately recognize, value, and reward women’s work in health are of utmost importance; and that political will at the highest level and action across sectors is necessary to allow the required changes.
The development of social security policies and programmes raises the need for their coordination to enhance effectiveness as well as to prevent the fragmentation of social policies, programmes and services. Although there are expected benefits, implementing coordinated programmes poses significant technical challenges, which increase the complexities and costs of projects and hinder the achievement of such initiatives. Some of the main difficulties are related to system and information integration (Interoperability) as well as the ability to enforce data security and privacy regulations. To help meet such challenges, the International Social Security Association (ISSA) has developed Guidelines on Information and Communication Technology to support the integrated ICT-based implementation of social programmes. This article reviews existing scenarios, discusses the benefits and challenges of coordinated approaches, and offers models to show how to implement such types of systems while applying the ISSA Guidelines.
The concept of integrated services is a common feature of current social policy discussions. It is often argued that social support systems have not evolved to cope with the complexity of individuals’ needs. This is deemed true for a variety of interrelated difficulties that cut across traditional welfare programmes and life course lines. This article examines the efforts of integrated services to bridge policy areas such as social policy, labour market policy and health care services for four different vulnerable groups at major stages of the life course: childhood, youth, adulthood and old age. Analytically, the article adopts a framework developed by Valentijn et al. (2013) that allows systematic comparisons. Using mainly high-income economy examples, the article connects key features of a certain policy area with key elements of integrated services. Key features of a policy area direct attention to the function of the policy area, and these are expressed through the framework of “person-focused” and “population-focused” services. Key elements of integrated services in turn emphasize levels of integration (macro, meso, micro level). Central questions addressed are the character of integration efforts for vulnerable groups at different stages of the life cycle and how variations therein can be understood. As a complement, sociological explanations of individual vulnerability, which are separated by causes of vulnerability into basic, conditional and triggering factors, are also used. A main finding is that the life course perspective as such does not explain variation in integration efforts; rather, it is the institutional features of the specific policy areas. These constrain or promote the potential for greater integration.
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.
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.
Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden have advanced multi-pillar pension systems. Using micro-simulations, this article presents a close examination of the interaction of pillars in these countries. The relative importance and the role of the different pension pillars vary from country to country, and according to age, income, gender and socio-economic dimensions as well as between generations. A further area of investigation is the mitigation capacity of the four pension systems. On the one hand, adverse labour careers lead to lower life-time earnings and lower private pension accruals. On the other hand, these effects are mitigated through the design of pillars and their interaction. Mitigation is important to income security and stability in retirement and to post-retirement income distribution. However, mitigation mechanisms come at the cost of incentives. Moreover, in many countries, the generosity of public benefits is set to decrease – increasing the importance of private pensions. This will shift risk and uncertainty from employers and pension institutions to individuals. Thus, risks and uncertainties related to private pensions will become more important, raising questions about the division of responsibilities between public and private pensions, and about the potential of mitigating such risk through pillar interaction. These concerns are further reinforced by labour market changes. Although a pension system free of distortions is inconceivable, this article seeks to contribute to addressing how mitigation should be designed, and how mitigation and risk sharing should be balanced against incentives, challenges which are as much political as technical.
It is widely known that informal contacts and networks constitute a major advantage when searching for a job. Unemployed people are likely to benefit from such informal contacts, but building and sustaining a network can be particularly difficult when out of employment. Interventions that allow unemployed people to effectively strengthen their networking capability could as a result be promising. Against this background, this article provides some hints in relation to the direction that such interventions could take. First, on the basis of data collected on a sample of 4,600 newly-unemployed people in the Swiss Canton of Vaud, it looks at the factors that influence jobseekers' decisions to turn to informal contacts for their job search. The article shows that many unemployed people are not making use of their network because they are unaware of the importance of this method. Second, it presents an impact analysis of an innovative intervention designed to raise awareness of the importance of networks which is tested in a randomized controlled trial setting.
The conservative bias in social attitudes to the welfare state is manifested in entrenched support among the public for traditional welfare and social security benefits, chiefly higher pension payments and public expenditure on health care. This pattern has been reinforced by the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession as public support for social protection strategies geared towards "new" social risks – structural changes in labour markets, adverse demography, gender inequality, and family instability – has remained relatively weak. This pattern of resistance to change may hardly be surprising given that reforms are more often viewed by the public as a form of retrenchment with clear losers and few obvious beneficiaries. This underlines that political courage is rarely enough to achieve structural reforms of the welfare state. There will need to be clearly defined short-term and long-term objectives underpinned by a coherent rationale capable of persuading publics and citizens of the case for change if a more "Dynamic" system of social security is to be enacted in the industrialized countries over the next 20 years.
To conclude this special double issue, this article addresses four questions related to the strategic pursuit of, what the ISSA calls, Dynamic Social Security (DSS). Based on the evidence of the presented national case studies, social security policy reform priorities differ depending on the level of national economic development, the maturity of the social security system and issues of political economy. Against this backdrop, it is concluded that while general reform trends may be consistent with the objectives defined by DSS, there is important – and often appropriate – divergence across national social security practices.
Since Brazil's re-democratization in 1985, the country's system of social protection has become more focused on the neediest population groups while at the same time emphasizing universal access. In a context of severe inequality, the sub-national units of government have played a greater role in reaching the broader population. Yet Brazil's social protection model favours cash transfers over social services, and reduces inequalities in the context of a highly unequal labour market. Strategies based on cash transfers appear to have reached their limits, because they are not the most effective way to promote equality and generate opportunities, when compared to the outcomes obtained by social service provision. Furthermore, while much progress toward reducing inequality has been achieved, benefits and services continue to fall short of what might be considered as typifying a welfare state or "Dynamic Social Security".