Social Protection, Labor and Employment

Access to social protection is critical for ending extreme poverty and boosting prosperity on a livable planet. The World Bank is committed to scaling up social protection programs, working with governments and partners, to support at least 500 million poor and vulnerable people by 2030, with a focus on women and children.

Social protection is a lifeline for poor people.  It helps protect people against shocks today and build resilience and human capital to make the most of tomorrow. Well-designed social protection programs have a high return on investment.  For every dollar transferred to poor families, there is an estimated multiplier effect of $2.49 in the local economy.  The evidence also suggests impacts on a range of outcomes—from nutrition and early childhood development to climate adaptation and mitigation to women’s empowerment and livelihood diversification.

Yet, despite an unprecedented scale-up of social protection systems during the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 2 billion people in low- and middle-income countries still lack adequate coverage. At the same time, we are facing significant labor market challenges, including a projected need for 320 million additional workers in high-income countries and a 300 million job gap for young people, primarily in Africa and South Asia.

Scaling up social protection programs to achieve the target of supporting at least 500 million people demands more and better spending.  Low-income countries, particularly in Africa and South Asia where coverage gaps are highest, will continue to need additional external support.  Efficiency gains are possible through resource reallocation, away from regressive subsidies; through diversification of financing, including innovative financing mechanisms; and through digital delivery systems.  It also demands redoubled attention on the knowledge agenda to develop evidence and promote learning, as well as to pursue partnerships that leverage collective action toward universal social protection.  

EQUITY

Building social protection systems that are well-designed can have powerful impacts over the long term, by reducing inequalities and exclusion, creating opportunities, and ending the inter-generational cycle of poverty - including for women, youth, and persons with disabilities.

Social protection instruments like social insurance, social assistance, and labor and economic inclusion programs help people, especially women, find better jobs. They also allow individuals to improve productivity, and families to invest in the health and education of their children, provide food security, and protect the aging population.

The rapidly changing nature of work in countries at all income levels requires a new approach to social protection and labor policy that works for everyone, according to the report “Protecting All: Risk-Sharing for a Diverse and Diversifying World of Work”. It proposes an approach to worker protection and social security that is better adapted to an increasingly diverse and fluid world of work. These ideas are explored even more fully in the 2022 strategy update, “Charting a Course Towards Universal Social Protection: Resilience, Equity, and Opportunity for All”

OPPORTUNITY

The working-age share of the global population has peaked and the world is now aging. In just three decades, it is estimated that one in four European, North American, and Asian residents will be over 65 years of age. Over the same period, more than a third of the world’s young people aged 15 to 24 will live in Africa. The World Bank’s Global Skills Partnerships are a new way to address the human, economic, and social dimensions of this global demographic transition.

Economic inclusion programs that often combine cash transfers with training and savings groups help people develop valuable skills and start their businesses. They help individuals save money, invest in their businesses, and become economically self-reliant. They are also particularly impactful for women – expanding opportunities for participation within the labor force and increasing knowledge and financial literacy.

The world’s working-age population will increase by about 700 million between 2019 and 2035. Preparing for the jobs of tomorrow while making critical human capital investments today is a priority for achieving economic transformation in the poorest countries. Aging populations worldwide will also benefit from attention to income support as they retire, opportunities to work later in life, and access to long-term care.

Simultaneously, the current polycrisis is increasing migration pressures. The World Bank sees migration as one of the solutions to address this demographic imbalance while improving the lives of millions of migrants, including those who are forcibly displaced. Global Skills Partnerships are schemes in which the country of destination supports the training of potential migrants to get qualifications demanded at the destination in sectors such as mechanics, construction, health care, renewable energy, and other green industries.

RESILIENCE

Many countries have embraced social protection instruments such as cash transfer programs to support human capital and empower people. Apart from providing struggling families with supplemental income, these social safety nets also increase access to information and services, improve productivity, protect the elderly, and support people, especially young people, while they look for work.

Taken together, strong social protection systems help individuals and families, especially the poor and vulnerable, prepare for and cope with crises and shocks. Such systems and tools are transformative as they give people a chance to avoid or escape poverty. Well-designed social protection programs are also cost-effective, costing countries about 1.5% of GDP on average.

The future of social protection is adaptive and digital. Adaptive Social Protection invests in households’ ability to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks without becoming trapped in poverty. Often integrating disaster risk, crisis response, and climate change measures, such systems can increase the resilience of households against climate shocks, health emergencies, food insecurity, and inflation by adapting to the situation.

COVID-19 provided the ultimate stress test for Adaptive Social Protection, as countries with functioning systems were better able to rapidly expand support—by both including additional beneficiaries and by increasing the benefits paid to existing recipients. Countries with more established ways of delivering social assistance to people—such as digital social registries and payment systems—showed the strongest ability to respond to shocks efficiently, quickly, and inclusively.

UNIVERSAL SOCIAL PROTECTION

The World Bank has a vision for universal social protection to ensure that all people have the support they need and that no individuals or groups are left behind. It is the cornerstone of inclusive social policy. 

Achieving universal social protection requires adaptive systems that can expand registration, enrollment, and program participation. It also requires bridging the digital divide so that poor and vulnerable people and those without regular access to technology are not excluded.

While achievements have been made in designing and promoting the adoption of social assistance programs and delivery systems, investing heavily in initiatives to improve jobs and earnings opportunities and expanding social insurance programs are equally important.

Last Updated: Oct 08, 2024

We support three key goals of an effective social protection and jobs system through the lifecycle, including:

• Equity: Reducing poverty and inequality, promoting equality of opportunity, and addressing exclusion, especially for women and girls. 
• Opportunity: Investing in human capacity and food and nutrition, improving access to productive work, building skills for work and life, and facilitating the transition from school to work.
• Resilience: Providing protection and insurance against shocks and building the capacity to manage them, including against natural disasters, pandemics, climate change, economic and financial crises, conflict or forced displacement. Expanding social insurance, pensions, and unemployment insurance to support those living with disabilities and for all households into old age.

In 2022, the World Bank launched a social protection and jobs (SPJ) strategy update focused on “Charting a Course Towards Universal Social Protection”, also known as the SPJ Compass. It builds on the 10-year social protection and labor strategy (2012-2022) which laid out ways to deepen the World Bank Group’s involvement, capacity, knowledge, and impact in delivering social protection programs.

The SPJ Compass prioritizes the vision of universal social protection (USP). It recognizes that the progressive realization of USP, which ensures access to social protection for all whenever and however they need it, is critical for effectively reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. Countries across the globe are increasingly using this vision to guide their policy.

The Global Partnership for Universal Social Protection (USP2030) is co-led by the World Bank and the International Labour Organization. USP2030 partners work together to increase the number of countries that provide USP by supporting governments in designing and implementing universal and sustainable social protection systems.

Last Updated: Apr 01, 2024

As of September 2024, the World Bank is providing $29.5 billion in financing, including $17.6 billion through IDA, to respond to the growing demand for social protection solutions amidst overlapping global crises.

Our programs are currently supporting over 222 million people, with more than half of the beneficiaries being women. These initiatives help individuals cope with and adapt to various shocks, access and secure jobs, enhance productivity, support the health and education of their children, develop skills throughout extended working lives, and safeguard aging populations and persons with disabilities.

We have also significantly expanded our efforts in fragile, conflict, and violent settings, where we are reaching 57 million people with social protection measures. Additionally, over 18 million people have seen improvements in their earnings, particularly through microenterprise support. Our focus on jobs and skills programs has led to the creation of over 100 initiatives, with a particular emphasis on empowering youth and women in vulnerable communities.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Latin America started in the early 1990s, with conditional cash transfer programs like Prospera in Mexico. As school enrollment increased and nutrition improved as a result of the program, this simple idea took off, spreading quickly throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Initiatives like the Income Support Program for the Poorest in Bangladesh reached 600,000 women over nearly a decade and improved their children’s nutrition, cognitive development, and readiness for school.

The Social Cash Transfer Program in Zambia, which impacted more than 3 million people—20% of the population—improved the livelihoods of women and expanded access to education for children, were truly transformative.

A social safety nets project in South Sudan incorporated gender-transformative behaviors, social cohesion, and gender-based violence risk mitigation. The IDA-supported project exceeded its own targets for gender equality, with 77% female participation in labor-intensive public works programs.

In Niger, 18 months after the end of an Adaptive Social Protection program, women in a productive inclusion program saw their incomes and the share coming from non-agriculture activities both increase by up to 100%.

The Urban Productive Safety Net Project (UPSNP) in Ethiopia reached more than 600,000 people in  poor urban areas, 60% of whom were women. The project enabled beneficiaries to open bank accounts for the first time, resulting in more than $11.3 million in savings. Livelihood grants helped more than 50,000 people complete skills and financial literacy training to help them start small businesses and support their self-employment - one of the main pathways out of poverty. 

More than 60,000 people were linked to social services such as health insurance, education and housing support and more than 45 non-governmental organizations provided e services for the economic and social integration of people living in street situations. Neighborhood quality was improved through public works and promotion of urban agriculture. The project helped Ethiopia to develop the first management information system to capture data related to both urban and rural poor, which will serve as the overall monitoring system for safety nets in the country.

Last Updated: Oct 08, 2024

The World Bank Group and the International Labour Organization (ILO) work together to achieve social protection for all. The partnership is expanding social protection measures worldwide as part of a global effort to combat poverty and rising income inequality.

The World Bank receives support from the governments of Australia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, GHR Foundation and UBS Optimus Foundation through the Rapid Social Response Adaptive and Dynamic Social Protection (RSR-ADSP) Umbrella Program. The program provides catalytic resources to help low-income countries build social protection and labor systems, so that they are prepared for future crises.  To date, the RSR program has provided $141 million for more than 380 activities in more than 100 countries worldwide.

Housed at the World Bank, the Partnership on Economic Inclusion (PEI) seeks to help increase the income and assets of extremely poor and vulnerable people by developing economic inclusion programs globally and contributing to evidence-based good practices that can be adapted to local conditions by governments and local or international agencies.

The Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (SASPP) supports the strengthening of adaptive social protection systems in six Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal), and currently covers more than 2.3 million people.  The program enables individuals, households, and societies to build resilience and better withstand the impacts of shocks that regularly afflict the sub-region, including those triggered by climate change (drought and floods), conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic.

To strengthen countries’ social protection systems, the World Bank together with development partners launched the Inter-Agency Social Protection Assessments (ISPA). ISPA is a set of tools that help countries develop standardized delivery mechanisms in designing social protection systems, allowing for the effective and coordinated delivery of social protection programs to beneficiaries.

For more than a decade, the World Bank hosted the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD), a brain trust of the global migration community. While the program closed in 2024, its multidisciplinary knowledge and data continues to support partners and policy makers around the world in sending, receiving and transit countries.

Last Updated: Oct 08, 2024