Universal Social Protection Floors: costing estimates and affordability in 57 lower income countries (ESS Working Paper No. 58)
Organization(s): ILO
Author: Andrés Acuña-Ulate, Christina Behrendt, Fabio Durán-Valverde, Isabel Ortiz, Karuna Pal
Regions: Asia-Pacific, Central Asia, East Asia, Latin America, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, The Caribbean
Year: 2017
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This paper presents the results of costing universal social protection floors in 34 lower middle-income, and 23 low-income countries, consisting of: (i) allowances for all children and all orphans; (ii) maternity benefits for all women with newborns; (iii) benefits for all persons with severe disabilities, and (iv) universal old-age pensions. The levels of this comparable set of benefits are based on nationally-defined poverty lines, and .presented as a percentage of GDP. The paper additionally reviews potential areas of fiscal space for the necessary extension of social protection systems, and concludes that universal social protection floors are feasible in the majority of developing countries.
Related Principles
States parties to major human rights instruments related to economic, social and cultural rights such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) have an immediate minimum core obligation to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, minimum essential levels of all economic, social and cultural rights such as the right […]