Other Social Protection Study
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Publication
Built to Include: Reimagining Social Protection in the Middle East and North Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-17)People in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and around the word, are hurting. A polycrisis, including COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has had—and is continuing to have—a devasting impact on living standards. But most countries in MENA were already struggling to reduce poverty and vulnerability before this cascade of shocks. This report argues that labor market exclusion is at the root of the problem. Many people cannot find jobs—MENA has the highest youth unemployment rate and the lowest women’s labor force participation rate in the world. And most workers are stuck in low-productivity informal jobs with no social protection. This makes them extremely vulnerable to falling into poverty when a shock hits—as the recent crises have pain- fully shown. Reducing labor market exclusion requires, first and foremost, a dynamic private sector that generates productive jobs. Our companion report on jobs in MENA, “Jobs Undone”, provides options to do that. How can social protection policies help? They can play a crucial role in reducing labor market exclusion, by facilitating access to productive jobs, protecting workers, and providing a safety net for people who are left behind and are at risk of poverty. And they should do so in an efficient manner, by ensuring financial responsibility and avoiding unintended consequences on decisions regarding work, retirement, and hiring. -
Publication
Stronger Social Protection and Labor Systems in Central America for a Resilient and Inclusive Recovery
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-17)Social Protection and Labor (SPL) Systems help individuals and societies manage risk and volatility and protect them from poverty through instruments that address the challenges of resilience, equity and opportunity. SPL systems include social safety nets, social insurance, and labor market programs. As recent events have shown, the relative emphasis among goals – resilience, equity and opportunity - can change over time, with demands put on SPL program design and delivery systems differing in each context. In relatively stable times, programs are likely to focus on human capital formation, equality of opportunity, poverty reduction, and redistribution. This was the case in Central America prior to the COVID-19 emergency, albeit with some shortcomings. The goal of shock-responsiveness (resilience) dramatically came to the fore during the pandemic, even if recognized earlier during natural disasters and now more broadly with climate change. Globally and in Central America, SPL systems had a critical role in the response to the COVID-19 emergency. -
Publication
Togo Jobs Diagnostic: Confronting Challenges and Creating Opportunities for More Good Quality Jobs for All
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-04)Togo, a small country with a young and growing population, must look to the development of more and better jobs to recover from recent shocks, accelerate poverty reduction and enhance social cohesion. While Togo’s employment rate is high, many are working low productive jobs with meager earnings and no access to social protection. Demographic pressures imply that Togo’s economy will need to absorb an additional one million labor market entrants between now and 2030. To create more, and better jobs, especially for young workers, substantive reforms are required to accelerate a structural transformation towards higher productivity activities. Besides improving the competitiveness of and access to finance for the private sector, improving conditions in the agricultural sector needs to be at the core of these reforms, as that sector will remain the main source of jobs and livelihoods for Togolese in the foreseeable future. -
Publication
Gender-Based Violence Country Profile: Dominica
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-28)The Commonwealth of Dominica (Dominica) is a multiparty unicameral parliamentary democracy. According to data from the 2011 Census, the population has fallen in every census since 1981, standing now at some 73,000 people. As throughout the world, men are more active in the labor force than women. The labor force participation rate for men was 70.6 percent, compared to 59.5 per cent for women, and unemployment for women was 19.5 percent, versus 15 percent for men. The adolescent fertility rate in Dominica stands at 40.3 per thousand females, aged 15 to 19 years. There is no easily accessible data on some key indicators of the status of women such as those for maternal and child health, contraceptive prevalence, and unmet contraceptive needs. There is also no accessible data which examines the living conditions of the indigenous population separately as a group of special interest. -
Publication
Gender-Based Violence Country Profile: Grenada
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-28)Though referred to as Grenada, the island state is in fact a collection of three islands - Grenada, Carriacuo, and Petit Martinique, cooperatively governed as Grenada. For the five years prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, economic growth in Grenada was considered robust. The COVID-19 pandemic threatened the economic expansion and changed the outlook for Grenada. Economic output collapsed by 11.2 percent in 2020 after seven consecutive years of growth. The labor market in Grenada is reflective of the global situation where unemployment is higher for women than men, and female participation is lower. Available data also shows that the majority of business- related loans go to men, and where women access such loans, they do so in collaboration with men, rather than on their own. Together these indicators suggest that women are not fully integrated into the formal economy in Grenada, and labor force data confirm that occupational sex segregation remains entrenched in the Grenadian labor market. -
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Gender-Based Violence Country Profile: Haiti
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-25)Haiti is a Caribbean country with a population of approximately 11 million people, 50.4 % of whom are female. Haiti’s progress in economic and social development has been impeded by persistent political instability, surging violence, and record-high levels of insecurity, all of which amplify its fragility. In the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region, Haiti remains the poorest country and one of the poorest in the world, with a GNI per capita of US$1,420 in 2021, the lowest in the LAC region compared to the average of US$15,092. The country ranked 163rd out of 191 nations on the UN’s Human Development Index in 2021. In the midst of the ongoing political and institutional turmoil, compounded by exposure to natural hazards and gangs fighting for control of business areas, the economy has shrunk by 1.7% in 2019, 3.3% in 2020,1.8% in 2021, and 1.7% in 2022, declining for four years in a row. This has resulted in poverty reduction gains being erased, and the lack of progress in critical areas essential for poverty reduction has negatively affected household incomes throughout the country. For instance, as of December 2021, 65% of households experienced a decline in their income compared to pre-pandemic levels, suggesting that the already high poverty rate has likely increased. Haiti also has one of the highest levels of inequality in the region, mainly because two-thirds of the poor live in rural areas where unfavorable agricultural conditions create a welfare gap between urban and rural regions. Haiti is among the world’s most vulnerable countries to natural disasters, including hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes, which affect more than 96% of the population. On August 14, 2021, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the southern region of Haiti, where approximately 1.6 million people reside. The epicenter was located roughly 12 km northeast of Saint-Louis-du-Sud, about 125 km west of the capital, Port-au-Prince. -
Publication
Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Response in World Bank Operations: Taking Stock After a Decade of Engagement (2012-2022)
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-27)Gender-based violence (GBV) represents a critical barrier to development globally. As the most extreme manifestation of gender inequality and the most prevalent form of violence worldwide, its impacts extend far beyond individual survivors, with implications for the productivity and well-being of families and communities, often across generations. This report reviews progress on GBV prevention and response in World Bank lending operations over the past decade finding that the institution offers unique entry points across all sectors in which it works to expand work on GBV. Critical investments in staff’s technical capacity, purposeful high quality analytical work to inform project design and implementation, and partnerships at the global, national, and local levels have driven the exponential progress on this agenda. Drawing on the lessons learned from a comprehensive review of the portfolio, interviews with staff and consultations with practitioners, donors and researchers in this area of work, the report lays out a guiding vision for deepening the work on GBV prevention and response in the decade ahead. -
Publication
Social Protection for Brazil of the Future: Preparing for Change with Inclusion and Resilience
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-21)This policy note assesses how Brazil’s social protection and labor systems can be reformed most effectively to meet the challenges that the country will face in the next two decades while also fostering social inclusion and shared prosperity. This discussion is timely as Brazil is slowly recovering from the global COVID-19 crisis, which brought new challenges as well as accelerating existing socioeconomic transformations. Despite the fact that labor markets are slow to recover after economic crises in Brazil, implementing the right set of policies could enable the country to take advantage of changes in the world of work, new opportunities for human capital formation, and recent developments in technology and delivery systems to build back better than in the past. Serving as a companion piece on social protection and labor policies for the Flagship Report “Alternative Futures for Brazil: Inclusion, Productivity, Sustainability” (World Bank, Forthcoming), this note draws from a large body of recent analytical work by the World Bank team in Brazil. The vision of the flagship report is for Brazil to reach 2040, two decades from now, with a more productive and resilient and less unequal society. -
Publication
Gender-Based Violence Country Profile: Guatemala
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-06-01)With a population of approximately 18.2 million people, Guatemala is the most populous country in Central America. Guatemala has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world, with violent deaths of women increasing from 1.3 per 100,000 women in 2020 to 1.6 per 100,000 women in 2021, resulting in 527 femicides reported in 2021 and 534 in 2022, and 69 femicides reported by March 2023. High-risk groups facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination include young and adolescent girls, indigenous women, those who have experienced adolescent pregnancies, early unions or marriages, women and girls living with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ groups. In order to address violence and discrimination against women and girls in Guatemala, various initiatives and policies have been implemented by the government and civil society organizations. However, much work remains to be done to effectively address the root causes of these issues and ensure the safety and wellbeing of all women and girls in the country. -
Publication
Gender-Based Violence Country Profile: Saint Vincent
(Washington, DC, 2023-06-01)St. Vincent and the Grenadines comprises a main island, Saint Vincent, and thirty-two other islands, islets, and cays in the archipelago of the Grenadines (SVG). It is a unicameral democracy, with fifteen seats for elected members in the House of Representatives. Historically, much of the economic activity was concentrated on agriculture, particularly banana cultivation and export to the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe. In April 2021, the explosive eruption of the La Soufrière volcano in the north of Saint Vincent destroyed much of Saint Vincent’s most productive agricultural lands. This affected negatively SVG as unlike most of its tourism-dependent neighbors, the Vincentian economy is primarily agricultural.