April 2020

01Apr

India. Migrant Workers Need Social Protection To Overcome COVID-19 Lockdown Trauma: Health Ministry

The Health Ministry today called for providing a social protection to migrant workers, saying they are prone to social, psychological and emotional trauma in lockdown situations. Immediate concerns faced by such migrant workers relate to food, shelter, healthcare, fear of getting infected or spreading the infection, loss of wages, concerns about the family, anxiety and fear. "Sometimes, they also face harassment and negative reactions of the local community. All this calls for strong social protection," the ministry said in...

April 1, 2020
News, Slider, , , , ,
Read more...

March 2020

23Mar

COVID-19 puts burden on gig economy workers. But can they deliver without social protection?

The coronavirus outbreak has caused life across the world to stutter to a halt and the barricades are now quickly going up. Borders are being shut down and people are increasingly seeking to isolate themselves as restricting social contact has been touted by the scientific community as the one measure that may work to decelerate the pace of the virus’ spread. However, in order for most of society to survive the isolation comfortably, we shall find ourselves increasingly dependent...

March 23, 2020
News, Slider, , , , ,
Read more...

February 2020
22Feb

Progress and Challenges of Nonfinancial Defined Contribution Pension Schemes

The aim of this anthology is to provide new contributions to the collective knowledge of the issues and challenges of designing mandated and earnings-related universal public pension schemes (UPPS), in which a universal public nonfinancial defined contribution (NDC) scheme is one of four design options. In 1994, Nonfinancial Defined Contribution (NDC) Pension Schemes left the crib and was taking its first steps in Sweden, Italy, and Latvia. A couple of years later a fourth sibling was born in Poland, with...

February 22, 2020
Books, Books, Labor Market, Pension design, , , , ,
Read more...
22Feb

Health, Wealth, and Informality over the Life Cycle

By Julien Albertini, Xavier Fairise, Anthony Terriau How do labor market and health outcomes interact over the life cycle in a country characterized by a large informal sector and strong inequalities? To quantify the effects of bad health on labor market trajectories, wealth, and consumption, we develop a life-cycle heterogeneous agents model with a formal and an informal sector. We estimate our model using data from the National Income Dynamics Study, the first nationally representative panel study in South Africa. We...

February 22, 2020
Articles, Labor Market, Pension design, , , ,
Read more...

January 2020
24Jan

What Aspects of Formality Do Workers Value? Evidence from a Choice Experiment in Bangladesh

By Minhaj Mahmud, Italo A. Gutierrez, Krishna Kumar, Shanthi Nataraj This study uses a choice experiment among 2,000 workers in Bangladesh to elicit willingness to pay (WTP) for job attributes: a contract, termination notice, working hours, paid leave, and a pension fund. Using a stated preference method allows calculation of WTP for benefits in this setting, despite the lack of data on worker transitions, and the fact that many workers are self-employed, which makes it difficult to use revealed preference...

January 24, 2020
Articles, Labor Market
Read more...
22Jan

African Public Servants unhappy

(APACSUN) has expressed indignation that large proportion of workers on the continent are not covered under the social security systems, especially for the informal sector. APACSUN has, therefore, resolved to support member unions to study and adopt best practices that enable the improvement of pension administration and benefits for members. This was in a communique the Network issued at the end of its Second Strategic Meeting in Ghana from January 15 to 17, signed by Mr Isaac Bampoe Addo,...

January 22, 2020
News, Slider, ,
Read more...

December 2019

27Dec

Nigeria. Micro-pension contributors hit 30,000 in 7 months

Contributors for the Micro Pension plan are now 30,000 seven months after it was launched, the National Pension Commission (PenCom) has said. The Acting Director General of PenCom, Aisha Umar-Dahir said this in an exclusive interview with Daily Trust. The Micro Pension plan was launched by President Muhammadu Buhari in March 2019. It is aimed at extending pension coverage to the self-employed and persons working in the informal sector to drive financial inclusion and allow the target population to...

December 27, 2019
News, Slider, , , ,
Read more...
20Dec

Is Informality Good for Business? The Impacts of IDP Inflows on Formal Firms

By Sandra Rozo, Hernan Winkler This paper examines the effects of large inflows of internally displaced persons (IDP), who are primarily absorbed by the informal sector, on the behavior of formal manufacturing firms in Colombia. To identify causal effects, the analysis employs annual, firm-level panel data between 1995 and 2010 and exploits that when conflict intensifies, forcefully displaced individuals tend to migrate to municipalities where people from their origin locations settled earlier. The paper finds that large inflows of...

December 20, 2019
Articles, Labor Market, , ,
Read more...

November 2019

12Nov

Nigeria. Micro pension: Gaining traction amid challenges

While the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) has been fully established and to a large extent taken care of workers in the formal sector including public and private establishments, the micro-pension plan for the informal sector came on-board fully this year with a major launch by the Federal Government. Read also Poland Approves Plans to Overhaul Pension System The scheme, which went through the usual teething problem associated with every new programme, has, however, appeared to be taking shape...

November 12, 2019
News, Slider, , , ,
Read more...

October 2019

14Oct

Ireland. Self-employed are being left behind in putting away pensions savings

THE number of people working for themselves and saving towards a personal pension has dropped by almost a third in the last four years, according to HMRC. The Taylor Review showed that the number of people working for themselves had increased by a third since the start of the century. In 2001 it was 3.3 million, it had risen to 4.81 million by 2017. Still only 13 per cent are saving for a pension. This is compared to 68...

October 14, 2019
News, Slider, , ,
Read more...