Description
With the adoption of the International Labour Organization’s Social Protection Floors Recommendation and the recognition in the Sustainable Development Goals of the importance of social protection (Target 1.3), there is now a consensus that, in principle, all countries can and should commit to the provision of minimum levels of social protection for their citizens, regardless of their level of economic development. However, the lowest-income countries face a number of barriers to the realisation of rights-based social protection systems, including not only resource constraints and limited tax bases, but the problems of extending entitlements to citizens in the face of potential exogenous shocks from natural disasters, climate-change related disasters, economic crises or pandemics. Such countries are therefore likely to need to rely on international sources of funding support, at least in the medium term, if they are to begin to build long-term social protection systems.In this paper, we examine OECD data on global financing flows for social protection, in order to establish the extent and composition of existing flows and how these have changed over time. We also contribute to the discussion of the means by which global support for the establishment of social protection systems in low-income countries can be expanded. We first discuss the global policy context of financing for social protection and recent initiatives to support the expansion of such financing. We then present the results of our analysis of existing global flows for social protection, examining the sources and recipients of these flows and how they have changed over time. Finally, we discuss what our results mean for the development of new sources of global financing for social protection, in the context of ongoing policy debates.
| Period | 2 Jul 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Social Policy Association and East Asian Social Policy Research Network – Joint Annual Conference 2025 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | United KingdomShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | National |
Keywords
- Global social policy
- social protection