Home > Challenging the Economic Orthodoxies Undermining Universal Social Protection
Workers in the informal economy from six different sectors. A Domestic Worker, a Garment Worker, a Home-Based Worker, a Street Vendors / Market Trader, a Transport Worker, and a Waste Picker.

OUR APPROACHThe global drive towards universal social protection emphasizes the need to extend social protection to all workers, including those in informal employment. However, significant coverage gaps persist, due to entrenched policy paradigms and ideas.

Policy ideas are important, and how they are framed is critical. This is the moment to actively question ideas  that ultimately lead to regressive outcomes for the majority of the world’s workers.

By commissioning high-level research and partnering with the International Labour Organization and academics, we sought to re-shape global narratives about the financing of social protection, about  interactions between social protection and the labour market, and about the structure of social protection systems.

For more information about the project, check out these episodes of WIEGO’s podcast on social protection (episode #26 and #32)

PROJECT ACTIVITIES

  • Project outputs include working papers, reports, blogs and online articles that are fed into key global policy spaces and documents. Major achievements include:

    • Convening a year-long global learning exchange on the informal economy with international financial institutions and UN agencies.
    • Brought together key evidence generated through the project in a UNU-WIDER working paper and a chapter in an open-access book published by Oxford University Press and UNU-WIDER.
    • Co-authored the chapter on the extension of social protection in the OECD report Breaking the Vicious Circles of Informal Employment and Low Paying Work.
    • Contributed a blog for socialprotection.org on Exploring a fairer and more inclusive social protection paradigm for the world’s informal workers.
    • We co-organized a webinar to share evidence countering the claim that social protection is a driver of informality. Recognizing the importance of this discussion in Latin America, we also shared this evidence in an address to the membership of the Inter-American Social Security Conference at the 31st Session of the Permanent Seminar on Welfare in the Americas.
    • Produced a blog (also in Spanish) questioning the impact of Mexico’s health insurance scheme on informality for the Inter-American Development Bank.
    • In a webinar organized with the OECD and academic partners, we presented novel evidence on the taxes paid by workers in informal employment in Accra, Ghana.
    • As co-chairs of the Global Partnership for Universal Social Protection (USP2030) Working Group of Financing, we succeeded in having the following recognized as the consensus view within the social protection community: “[Extension of social protection coverage] should include analyses of the taxes and fees already paid by informal workers, which are not always accounted for and can add up to a regressive tax-to-income ratio for poorer informal workers, limiting contributory capacities”.