This article offers a framework for the comparison and benchmarking of administrative expenditures of mandatory pension schemes as part of national social security provisions. It presents results of a quantitative analysis that builds on a framework developed around the extensive body of literature on both public and private pension programmes surveyed as part of this analysis. Our dataset includes over 100 observations and a broad set of explanatory variables. We developed and compared a number of standardized cost indices discussing their advantages and limitations. We also discuss major cost components and their shares in total programme costs. The regression analysis explains over 90 per cent of variation in administrative expenditures. It confirms some of the hypotheses expressed in the earlier studies and presents new evidence of driving factors for costs. We developed three different specifications for statistical analysis. The first set looks at the impact of design of a programme on total costs. The second group of specifications assesses differences in costs of managing pension liabilities between the public and private mandatory pension schemes. Finally, on the basis of the third model we generate benchmarks for staffing levels and for the total administrative expenditures, providing guidance for policy analysis and recommendations. Notably, the spread between low and high benchmark estimates for programmes of the same size and operating in the same economic environment can be four-fold and is driven by parameters of design and operation (for example, asset management function, in-house collection, or operation of special supplementary schemes). Therefore, inferences about the level of administrative expenditures should always be done keeping in mind the institutional context for each programme.

The Member States of the European Union entered the financial crisis with very different pension systems. Although the use of standard adequacy measures suggest small impacts from the crisis, alternative measures based on pension wealth estimates indicate stronger effects. While the largest continental systems were left relatively unscathed by the crisis, Mediterranean systems were cut back significantly. This should lead to considerable convergence in system generosity across countries. Despite the cuts, state pensions in the stressed economies should still be generous enough to keep the majority of pensioners out of relative poverty, but this depends on a relatively quick turnaround in labour market performance in these countries.

Attempts to replace pay-as-you-go pension schemes with private funded systems came to a halt in Central and Eastern Europe after 2005. However, more recently, the region has witnessed two belated reformers: the Czech Republic and Romania. Both countries decided to partially privatize pensions despite the rising tide of evidence concerning the challenges associated with the policy. We argue that while part of the domestic political elite remained supportive of private funded pensions, the difficulties experienced by earlier reformers and reduced support from International Financial Institutions led to the adoption of small funded pension pillars. Such cautious attempts at privatization might become more common in the future as large reforms have proven politically unsustainable.

Social protection is widely considered to have a positive effect on children, including supporting improvements in nutritional, educational and health outcomes. Much less is known, however, about the impact of interventions on children's care. This article considers the impact of a social cash transfer targeted at poor households – Ghana's Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme – on child well-being, quality of care and preventing children's separation from their parents as perceived by programme and non-programme beneficiaries in a context of vulnerability, large households and widespread informal kinship care. Findings suggest that cash transfers can improve both material and non-material aspects of well-being and contribute to the quality of care and have the potential to prevent children's separation from their parents. At the same time, not all children appear to benefit equally, with non-biological children being disadvantaged. The combination of large household sizes with programme design and implementation challenges, including low transfer amounts, a cap on the maximum number of eligible household members and poor sensitization and follow-up, undermine the positive role that cash transfers can play.

Longevity insurance annuities are deferred annuities that begin payment at advanced older ages, such as at age 80. Such annuities would benefit some older retirees who have drawn down their savings, but the private sector has problems in providing them. Originally, social insurance old-age benefits programmes in some countries were structured as longevity insurance programmes, with 50 per cent or less of those entering the workforce surviving to receive the benefits. Over time, however, as life expectancy has improved, the benefits these programmes provide have slowly transformed into benefits that most people entering the workforce ultimately receive. This article argues that the reintroduction of longevity insurance benefits as part of social insurance old-age benefit programmes could be an important policy innovation, in particular because this benefit is generally not provided by the private sector. China has introduced longevity insurance benefits as part of its social insurance system, offering a model for other countries, particularly those providing modest social insurance old-age benefits.

This article offers a critical analysis of the methods by means of which data relating to the performance of second pillar pension schemes are collated, compared and reported. This is done with regard to the performance of mandatory private second pillar pension funds in Eastern Europe. By critically examining data published in a number of World Bank studies, and through the identification of data problems and irregularities, the article argues that a much more elaborate and transparent approach to the collation, comparative analysis and reporting of data is needed. Required is the establishment of a consensus regarding what should represent a robust basis for making credible policy recommendations, not least with regard to pension re-reforms in the countries of Eastern Europe and elsewhere. In the absence of such a consensus, unresolved data problems and irregularities may potentially continue to influence the formulation of incomplete national policy conclusions regarding the performance of second pillar pension funds and, in turn, the ability of policy-makers to evaluate appropriately the need for, and assess the feasibility of implementing in a sustainable manner, pension re-reform.

This article asks how the legitimacy (recognition or misrecognition) of "ethnicity" and "disability" influences public policies to promote the inclusion of young adults in the Nordic labour markets. The article assesses the case for seeing misrecognition and lack of accommodation as significant factors behind troubled transitions from school to work, and the case for regarding social regulation (or self-regulation) as important ways of preventing, counteracting and correcting exclusionary factors in the transition from school to work among the two groups. The article argues that increased attention at the implementation stage of the policy process is necessary to be able to assess whether seemingly novel or innovative regulatory policies and measures actually enhance equal opportunities.

The article addresses the economic, social and political dimensions of the Greek work-welfare nexus in the context of the recent financial crisis. Explaining the main social protection and activation measures before and during the crisis (a reduction in salaries and in the purchasing power of employees partnered with unemployment benefits, contribution subsidies for employers, training and work-practice vouchers, and fixed-term quasi-employment in community services), analysis is offered of the impacts of these. The article concludes that employment measures in Greece are not only residual and inadequate to meet the needs of the unemployed but have not curbed rising unemployment rates.

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.

In its disability strategy, the European Union has expressed the central aim to improve the employment situation of people with disabilities. This article discusses Dutch policies, but specifically the Sheltered Work Act which contributes to this aim by regulating sheltered employment. The goal is to identify and explore innovative practices that have been applied by Dutch sheltered work companies for increasing the inclusion of disabled people in the regular labour market. The article reveals that the Netherlands has implemented a range of initiatives which together have resulted in an increase of non-sheltered jobs for disabled people. The article argues that the simple "sheltered/non-sheltered" dichotomy does not do justice to the gradual evolution of labour participation among individual disabled people and that the role of sheltered work places as a first step to the inclusion of disabled people should not be underestimated.

This article explores the nature of innovative employer-oriented activation policies, which aim to influence employers' willingness to hire or possibly train and guide the unemployed. These policies may focus on responsibilities with regards to activation, which offer services to employers or provide incentives to influence employers' involvement. Employers may take up a role as client or as co-producer during policy implementation. Qualitative empirical data from two Dutch cities show that employers have diverse motives to become involved: to hire new workers, to lower costs or to enact social responsibility. Actual practice shows mixed results in terms of labour market participation and employer satisfaction. It appears that the active involvement of employers as co-producers increases their willingness to be more flexible concerning their demands and leads to greater satisfaction with outcomes. The consequences of this model for the governance of activation policy are discussed.

This article addresses the reforms introduced in Latin American pension systems that had the aim of increasing coverage beyond formal-sector workers. For this purpose, fourteen representative regional experiences are analysed using a taxonomy based on features of the cases examined in terms of design, implementation and results. The findings show that, although the reforms share the goal of expanding coverage, there are significant differences deriving from the context in which they were originally designed, their goals, and the capacity available to implement them. The results are not homogeneous, and it is possible to identify some aspects in which policy decisions can lead to better or worse results.

This article reviews the recent literature on existing mechanisms that allow for the portability of social security entitlements for migrant workers and finds that North–North migrants have the best access to portability. There is limited coordination between origin and destination countries regarding the portability of social entitlements of South–North migrants. These migrants are dealing with discourses and policies that treat them as second class citizens, even as they are providing much-needed labour to their host countries. South–South migrants are seeing new regional mechanisms addressing portability. However, many of the impacts of these mechanisms are not yet known. Other knowledge gaps on portability relate to internal and South–South migration, the role of gender and other social identities, migrants' occupations as well as their legal immigration status.

In 2008, Great Britain overhauled its disability benefit programme by introducing a new disability determination process called the Work Capability Assessment and a new earnings replacement programme called Employment and Support Allowance. This article examines the British reforms from the perspective of the United States, which may consider changes to its disability benefit programme, the Social Security Disability Insurance programme, in the near future. The article provides an overview of the steps leading to the reform in Great Britain, details how the new programme operates, reviews research on its initial implementation and effects, and identifies lessons for the potential reform of the disability benefit programme in the United States.

One of the biggest challenges currently facing European society is the dramatically high level of youth unemployment. Commonly, political solutions and strategies can be found in those countries that have been able to keep youth unemployment low in spite of the financial and economic crises. Austria is such a case. On the basis of European Union member state data, the article gives a multifactorial explanation of youth unemployment and asks whether these factors can explain relatively low youth unemployment in Austria. With the country's "youth safety net" presented in detail, it is shown that active labour market policy reduces youth unemployment in Austria. The article also points out the limitations of cross-country comparisons of youth unemployment rates and proposes the use of a greater number of indicators. Finally, the article argues for economic policies to stimulate demand, which have to be based on a political and social commitment to full employment.

Protecting maternity at work has been one of the primary concerns of the International Labour Organization since its foundation in 1919. Along with fundamental human rights treaties, the adoption of the Maternity Protection Convention, 2000 (No. 183) and, more recently, the ILO Recommendation concerning National Floors of Social Protection, 2012 (No. 202), have marked the universalization of the right to maternity protection and call for its extension to all women in line with the principle of equal opportunity and treatment between women and men. In the framework of these historical developments, this article presents evidence of how national legislative provisions on paid maternity leave have improved in the light of the principles of international labour standards, although a large majority of women workers are still not adequately protected in case of maternity. The article then addresses patterns of exclusion from maternity protection in law and practice, and concludes by discussing some social protection programmes that have the potential to extend maternity protection coverage and support to meet the care needs of the most vulnerable and which do so with a gender transformative focus.

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.

The West African States recognize the importance of social protection and its dual social and economic function; a perspective that coincides fully with the topic of this special issue on Dynamic Social Security. Between 2007 and 2013 theses States developed national social protection policies, strategies or action plans and are now engaged in their implementation. This article reviews these national social protection policies (or strategies) in ten countries in the sub-region (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Niger, Senegal and Togo) and presents their contents, revealing a similarity of approach in the development of policies. Specifically, after having carried out a diagnostic study of social protection in their respective countries, the States followed seven distinct stages: defining a national vision, defining precisely what is meant by social protection, laying down the principles on which policies were to be based and finally setting out the general objectives, key areas and mechanisms for implementing and financing their national social protection policies. Following these stages, this comparative study seeks to outline the main trends and key elements of the national social protection policies and bring out best practices to provide a basic structure and general guidelines for developing a national social protection policy, implementing a social protection floor and promoting access to higher levels of protection.

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".