Social security systems faced with multiple challenges: Portugal's response to the polycrisis (2020–2025)

The creation, during Labour's second term, of the Department for Work and Pensions and the new delivery agency Jobcentre Plus, was a significant reorganization of the administration of employment and social security policy. Drawing on Regulation theory the article argues that reform was structurally driven by the need to ensure delivery mechanisms aligned with Labour's vision of an `employment first' welfare state. The organization and objectives of the Employment Service and Benefits Agency that Labour inherited hindered moves to promote joined-up working to deliver employment opportunities for the economically inactive. To overcome this problem the Government embarked on a merger to break down the organizational, historical and cultural barriers that had separated the work of each agency. The administrative function of delivering social security and employment policy has been shaped into an active exponent of the Government's socioeconomic strategy for supporting an evolving neo-liberal regime of accumulation.

Social security systems provide financial support during unemployment, illness, disability, and old age, evolving from informal, community-based support to structured, state-regulated schemes. A review was utilized in methodology covering publications from 2013 to 2023 aimed at identifying current social security schemes, challenges, and policy effectiveness and is guided by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Different search engines and databases including JSTOR, Google Scholar, and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). The search involves the use of key search strings such as social security, social policy, health insurance, social protection, policy formulation, and implementation. A total of 114 publications were obtained, and due to selection criteria, a total of 25 relevant articles remained and were included in the study. The findings reveal that Tanzania's social security system comprises various schemes like the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) and the Public Service Social Security Fund (PSSSF) which offer diverse benefits. However, challenges such as limited coverage, particularly in the informal sector, governance issues, and financial sustainability hinder their effectiveness. Despite these challenges, social security policies have positively impacted society in different ways such as poverty alleviation and healthcare access. Recommendations include expanding coverage, enhancing governance, increasing public awareness, leveraging technology, strengthening institutional capacity, ensuring financial sustainability, and fostering international partnerships. The study highlights the need for comprehensive reforms in Tanzania’s social security system to enhance coverage, governance, and sustainability, thereby ensuring greater social protection for all citizens particularly those in the informal sector, rural and remote areas.

This chapter is concerned with three transitions and their effects on social security and employment policies. In the transition from Maoist socialism, China aimed to reduce worker redundancy in enterprises and also to reduce the cost of benefits such as pensions that state-owned enterprises had to pay for their workers, whose jobs were guaranteed for life. The chapter traces the reforms in social security and employment policies and concerns over unemployment and possible risks to social stability. Employment policy was driven by the unresolved tension between reducing redundancy and preserving stability, while early pension reforms accommodated the evolving employment policy. As officials became aware of aging and the demographic transition, pension policy began to develop more independently, although employment concerns still kept the retirement age low. Evidence is presented that work has become common among older people in spite of official policy. Finally, the transition from agriculture has resulted in masses of rural people finding urban employment. In 2009 a rural pension system was established, separate from the urban system. But continued movement of workers between sectors is likely to create tensions in this dual pension system.

Changes in the nature of work and labour market regulation pose challenges to social protection systems relying on social insurance contributions. In contrast, the Australian system of social protection relies on general government revenue rather than social security contributions. In this system, some of the vulnerabilities of the social insurance state may not be so salient, but other challenges and trade-offs exist. In particular, Australia has been described as a “wage-earner’s welfare state” (Castles, 1985), with social protection linked to employment conditions, including relatively high minimum wages, paid sick, care, parental and holiday leave, workers compensation and mandatory occupational pensions. As in social insurance states, changes in the nature of work could potentially undermine these features of the Australian social protection system. A further difference is that the Australian social security system is highly income-tested, with spending being more targeted to the poor than any other OECD country. Administration of income-testing becomes more complicated if patterns of work become irregular or other circumstances, such as multiple job holding become common. This chapter assesses Australian employment and social security policies and institutions to identify strengths and weaknesses of the Australian approach to social security.

BackgroundAs people age, they are more likely to experience several health conditions which are circumstances that arise throughout life that can interfere with an individual’s ability to work, leading them to demand the social security system. This research aims to systematically review and synthesize studies related to health conditions in the aging process with social security policy reforms.MethodsA systematic review was performed across Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, Pubmed, CINAHL, ASSIA (Proquest) and APA PsycNet from 1979 to 2022. Methods are outlined in a published protocol registered a priori on PROSPERO (CRD42021225820). Eligible studies include original empirical articles published in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese, using the search terms “aging” and “social security”. Identified outcomes were organized into categories and a meta-ethnography was completed following the phases proposed by Noblit and Hare and the eMERGe meta-ethnography reporting guidance.ResultsThere were 17 eligible studies from 4 continents with 10 cross-sectional, 1 both cross-sectional and longitudinal and 5 longitudinal data analysis. These assessed the relationship of health conditions that occur in the aging process related to social security policies, in particular, to retirement. The categories included (i) health as a way to promote an active working life for the elderly; (ii) health as an indicator for reforms in social security policies; (iii) retirement planning as a strategic element for coping with post-retirement life; and (iv) the relationship between social security policies and psychological health.ConclusionsThis review showed that health and retirement defined in social security policies are related and have an impact on people’s lives, especially in the decision to leave the labor market. Therefore, measures to assess the possible consequences of this relationship when promoting reforms on social security policies should be encouraged.

Effects of social security policy reforms on mental health and inequalities: A systematic review of observational studies in high-income countries.

Retirement and wealth.

This paper examines New Labour's social security and related policies since 1997 in the light of evidence on public attitudes. The list of measures where policies have been in or have come into line with public attitudes is much longer than the list of measures where policies have been out of line with public attitudes or appear to have led them. One interpretation is that policy has been led by opinion surveys and focus groups, with opportunities lost to take more radical action and then persuade people of the need and justification for it. An alternative would be that policy has navigated with the grain of some of the more progressive parts of public opinion to achieve a result that has carried the public with it, in a way that would not have been sustainable if there had simply been an increase in the generosity of an unreformed social security system.

This paper reviews the course of fiscal policy and Social Security policy during the 1990s. The 1990s witnessed two fundamental changes in U.S. fiscal policy: a dramatic improvement in the current and projected budget balance, and a shift to a new political consensus in favor of balancing the budget excluding Social Security rather than the unified budget. The dramatic improvement in the budget outlook stemmed both from favorable developments in the economic environment and from deliberate policy actions that reduced budget deficits and later did not spend down the surpluses. In contrast, the 1990s did not witness significant changes in Social Security policy, although alternative visions of Social Security reform received tremendous analytic and popular attention. The 1994-1996 Advisory Council on Social Security presented three reform plans that placed important emphasis on additional prefunding. Each involved some form of investment in equities either centrally, through the trust fund, or in a decentralized manner, through individual accounts. Late in the decade, with the emergence of on-budget surpluses, the possibility of general revenue contributions to the Social Security system came under serious consideration. In the end, President Clinton decided to pursue Social Security reform based on general revenue contributions to the trust fund and centralized investment in equities rather than creating individual accounts, but his proposal was not adopted.

Previous articleNext article FreeOn Graduation from Default, Inflation, and Banking Crises: Elusive or Illusion?Rong Qian, Carmen M. Reinhart, and Kenneth RogoffRong QianUniversity of Maryland Search for more articles by this author , Carmen M. ReinhartUniversity of Maryland and NBER Search for more articles by this author , and Kenneth RogoffHarvard University and NBER Search for more articles by this author University of MarylandUniversity of Maryland and NBERHarvard University and NBERPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreI. IntroductionThis paper addresses the concept of "graduation" from external default, banking, and inflation crises.1 Employing a vast data set cataloging more than 2 centuries of financial crises for over 60 countries developed in Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), we explore the risk of recidivism across advanced economies versus middle- and low-income countries. We show that 2 decades without a relapse (falling into crisis) is an important marker. After 1800, roughly two-thirds of recurrences of external default on sovereign debt and three-quarters of recurrence of inflation crisis occur within 20 years.2 However, crisis recidivism distributions have very fat tails, so that it takes at least 50 and perhaps 100 years to meaningfully speak of "graduation." Indeed, in the case of banking crises in particular, it is hard to argue that any country in the world has truly graduated.Given that graduation (with its companion question, will this ever happen again?) is arguably one of the most important issues in macroeconomics and development, there has been remarkably little theoretical or empirical investigation of the subject. For example, the large theory literature on sovereign lending and default, while producing many important insights into the fundamental distinction between willingness to pay and ability to pay, largely treats a country's basic developmental and political characteristics as parametric. There is very little on explaining the political, social, economic, and financial dynamics that ultimately lead a country to be less prone to certain types of crises.We acknowledge that the concept of graduation is a hard nut to crack. Many advanced countries had enjoyed a long hiatus from systemic banking crises after World War II and yet had huge problems during the recent global financial crisis. After 90 years of serial default running from 1557 to 1647, Spain did not default again until 1809. Even the advanced countries had high inflation as recently as the 1970s and early 1980s, while many emerging markets had hyperinflation less than 2 decades ago. Is the advent of modern independent central banks sufficient to guarantee that fiscal dominance never again reasserts itself? Have the rich countries that have supposedly "graduated" from serial default on external debt shifted the locus of risk to de jure or de facto (via inflation or financial repression) default on domestic debt? Does the theory of sovereign default or of financial development tell us that we should expect richer and more advanced countries to be immune? Or is graduation a mirage, with the "graduates" really being at best "star pupils," and can graduates be distinguished from patients in remission?Our goals in this paper are fairly narrowly circumscribed. Most of our analysis is based on data on the dates and duration of the crises themselves. We speculate on underlying causal factors but do not approach them empirically here.3 Although the various types of crises often occur in clusters, our quantitative analysis mainly treats individual crises separately.We begin the paper in Section II by defining the crises that we will catalog. In Section III of the paper, we present a summary time line of crisis, followed by a brief overview of the early history of serial default on external debt. An interesting case is France, which defaulted on its external debt no fewer than nine times from the middle of the sixteenth century through the end of the Napoleonic War but has not defaulted on external debt since. France is a canonical case of what we define as an "external default graduate." (This did not stop France from having numerous severe banking crises in the past 2 centuries.)In the main body of the paper, we provide a broad aggregative historical overview of the data across different types of crises, distinguishing between advanced countries and emerging markets, also taking into account the advent of International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs after World War II as another marker of a debt crisis.In Section IX of the paper, we speculate on links between graduation and development and the possibility for recidivism among richer countries. The fact that the canonical theory of sovereign default does not strongly predict smaller problems in richer countries (it does not strongly predict graduation) might be considered a flaw in theory. But it might also be taken as warning sign that graduation can be more difficult and take even more time than our data of "just" a few centuries can reveal. On banking crises, the theory needs to better explain why countries never seem to graduate.The main empirical results from our long-dated historical time series on financial crises may be described as follows. First, the process of "graduation," that is, emergence from frequent crisis suffering status, is a long process. False starts are common and recurrent. This is especially true in the case of banking crises, for both high-income countries and middle- and low-income countries.Second, the vulnerability to crisis in high-income countries versus middle- and low-income countries differs mostly in external default crises, to a lesser extent in inflation crises, and surprisingly little in banking crises.4Third, the sequence of graduation for most countries is first to graduate from external default crisis, then from inflation crisis, and eventually from banking. The last stage of graduation is extremely difficult, even for high-income countries. Among high-income countries, even though most of them have graduated from external default crisis and inflation crisis, more than 20% recently experienced a banking crisis, and far more when weighted by size. Schularick and Taylor (2009) speculate that advanced countries continue to experience credit busts despite arguably advancing regulation and institutions, because as risks moderate, financial systems grow and restore them.Finally, the role of IMF programs in crises in the modern period is important. The availability of IMF bridge loans certainly has increased countries' resilience to "sudden stops" but, even setting aside moral hazard problems, is by no means a cure-all. Countries entering IMF programs are still forced to undergo painful macroeconomic adjustments in an attempt to regain sound fiscal footing and regain access to private capital markets. The challenges of successfully implementing IMF programs are underscored by the fact that there are many significant cases in which countries default within 3 years of an IMF bailout. IMF programs may help facilitate orderly debt workouts but do not guarantee them. We also note that in its early history, many of today's rich countries regularly drew on IMF resources, although there has been a 3-decade hiatus.II. Definition of CrisesExternal debt crisis. We distinguish between external and internal debt on the basis of the legal jurisdiction where the debt contracts are enforced. This is a convenient construct given the history and evolution of sovereign debt. Obviously it may be useful to parse the data in other ways for some exercises, and in principle our data set allows that.Although there are exceptions and there has been some evolution in recent years, typically in our long-dated historical data set, external debt is denominated in foreign currency and held by foreign creditors. There are certainly important examples, such as Mexico's short-term Tesobono bonds in the mid-1990s, where the debt is domestic yet is denominated in foreign currency and held primarily by foreign creditors. Although we regard the U.S. abrogation of the gold clause in the early 1930s—when gold was revalued from $21 to $35 per ounce—to be a default on domestic debt, many non-U.S. residents were also holding the debt at the time. In general, following standard practice, we define an external debt crisis as any failure to meet contractual repayment obligations on foreign debts, including both rescheduling or repayments and outright default. (As both of these examples make clear, however, one ultimately needs to think carefully about whether graduation from external default may sometimes just mean a shift to episodic de facto and de jure internal default.)In practice, most defaults on external debt end up being partial, with creditors typically (but not always) repaying 30¢–70¢ or more on the dollar, admittedly not adjusting for risk. The rationale for lumping together defaults regardless of the ultimate "haircuts" creditors are forced to absorb is that, in practice, the fixed costs of external debt default (which include difficulties in obtaining trade credits and loss of reputation) tend to be large relative to the variable costs. In principle, one could parse episodes more finely here according to, say, output or tax revenue loss depending on data availability, although we do not undertake that exercise here. See, however, Tomz (2007) and Tomz and Wright (2007).Inflation crises. Following Reinhart and Rogoff (2004), we define inflation crises as episodes in which annual inflation exceeds 20%. This threshold is lower than the 40% we and others have used in related studies on postwar data but is a compromise reflecting that prior to World War I, average inflation rates were much lower, and 20% inflation generally represented a significant level of dysfunction. Indeed, since we are particularly interested here in inflation as a vehicle for partial default, one clearly would also want to consider lower levels of sustained unanticipated inflation such as many advanced countries experienced in the 1970s. Depending on the maturity structure of debt, sustained 10% inflation can certainly be tantamount to de facto default. A proper calibration, however, would require detailed data on the maturity structure of debt (as in Missale and Blanchard 1994) and, ideally, also on the evolution of inflation expectations. We do not attempt this here, though again, this is an important caveat to interpreting the concept of graduation from external debt crises.Banking crises. Our definition of banking crises follows standard practice (e.g., Kaminsky and Reinhart 1999; Caprio and Klingebiel 2003). Following our own earlier work, "We mark a banking crisis by two types of events: (1) bank runs that lead to the closure, merging or takeover by the public sector of one or more financial institutions and (2) if there are no runs, the closure, merging, takeover, or large-scale government assistance of an important financial institution (or group of institutions) that marks the start of a string of similar outcomes for other financial institutions" (Reinhart and Rogoff 2009, 11). We recognize that our listing of systemic (on a national scale) banking crises may be incomplete, especially prior to 1970, especially for crises outside the large money centers that attract the attention of the world financial press.5Having set out basic definitions, we are now ready to view some basic characteristics of the data. To provide context and motivation for the concept of graduation, we begin with a summary time line of financial crises since 1550, followed by a brief overview of the early history of sovereign defaults.III. A Time Line of Financial Crises and the Early History of Sovereign DefaultsTable 1 provides a summary historical perspective that helps show how the three different varieties of financial crisis have spread over time and across country groups. Between 1550 and 1800, sovereign defaults on external debt were relatively common in Europe, but they were relatively rare elsewhere if only because (a) there were few other independent nations in a position to default and (b) given the crude state of global capital markets, relatively few countries were wealthy enough to attract international capital flows. Thus defaults were relatively insignificant in the regions that constitute today's emerging markets. Systemic banking crises, however, were relatively rare everywhere. The legal and technological underpinnings of modern private banking simply had not reached a stage of maturity and depth sufficient to cause systemic crises in most instances. (Of course, there are exceptions. Following Cipolla [1982] and MacDonald [2006], Reinhart and Rogoff [2009] discuss how England's 1340 default to Florentine bankers triggered a financial crisis in Italy.) Similarly, inflation crises were relatively rare, although again there are many exceptions (see Reinhart and Rogoff 2009, chap. 12). Prior to the widespread adoption of paper currency, bouts of very high inflation were relatively difficult to engineer.Table 1. Time Line of Crises, 1550–2010 External DebtCrisesBanking CrisesInflation Crises1550–1815 (Napoleonic wars end)Frequent in advanced economies (including the "world powers" of the time); serial in some casesRareRare1826Frequent in "peripheral" advanced economies and most emerging marketsSerial in advanced; rare in emergingRare18501900Serial in advanced; more frequent in emerging1913 (WW1 begins)Frequent in advanced and emerging1945 (WWII ends)Rare in advanced and emergingPost-1945Rare19641973Serial in some emerging marketsMore frequent in advanced; serial in emergingFrequent in advanced and emergingEarly 1980sEarly 1990sFrequent in emerging2000Rare20092010??View Table ImageThe end of the Napoleonic War in the early 1800s marks a significant transition. The largest advanced countries were increasingly able to avoid external default, albeit partly by their ability to issue an increasing share of their debt domestically. Default, however, became common in "peripheral" advanced countries such as Spain and Portugal, while newly independent emerging markets such as Greece and Latin America entered a long period of serial default. Over the same period, as advanced countries developed more sophisticated banking systems, banking crises became far more common. Emerging markets were certainly affected by advanced country banking crises but did not have so many of their own, if only because their financial systems were dominated by foreign banks.By the turn of the twentieth century, emerging market financial institutions had developed to the point where domestic banking crises became more common. By the time of the Great Depression of the 1930s, banking crises were a worldwide phenomenon. Owing in no small part to the financial repression that followed in reaction to the Great Depression, banking crises were relatively rare during the period from the end of World War II until the early 1970s. As financial repression thawed, banking crises became more frequent in the advanced economies and serial in many emerging markets, bringing us to the recent financial crisis episode.Finally, Table 1 gives a time line of inflation crises, which of course were quite common in all countries in the 1970s and remained a problem in emerging markets until the past decade.We thus focus our early history on sovereign external defaults. As Reinhart et al. (2003) and Reinhart and Rogoff (2009) emphasize, many of today's advanced economies had recurrent problems with default on sovereign debt during the period when they might arguably have been characterized as emerging markets. Table 2 illustrates the case of Europe for the 3-century period 1550–1850, with the years listed marking the beginning of a sovereign default episode.Table 2. External Defaults: Europe, 1550–1850CountryYears of DefaultNumberof DefaultsAustria-Hungary1796, 1802, 1805, 1811, 18165England*1594*1*France1558, 1624, 1648, 1661, 1701, 1715, 1770, 1788, 18129Germany: Prussia1683, 1807, 18133 Hesse18141 Schleswig-Holstein18501 Westphalia18121Netherlands18141Portugal1560, 1828, 1837, 1841, 18455Russia18391Spain1557, 1575, 1596, 1607, 1627, 1647, 1809, 1820, 1831, 184310Sweden18121Source: Reinhart et al. (2003), Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), and sources cited therein.Note: The table excludes Greece (which gained independence in 1829). Note that for some countries, even if there was a default on external debt, there may have been a default on domestic debt, as was the case for Denmark (1813).* Denotes our uncertainty at this time about whether England's default involved external (as opposed to purely domestic) debt.View Table ImageAs one can see clearly from the table, serial default was quite common among the major European powers during the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, with France defaulting on its external debt nine times and Spain defaulting 10 times (with three more to follow in the second half of the nineteenth century). One important observation, immediately apparent from the table, is that there is typically a substantial interval between defaults, typically decades, but sometimes centuries. (Note that we require at least 2 years between default episodes to regard them as independent events.) After defaulting in 1683, Prussia's next default episode did not follow for more than a century in 1807. Portugal, after defaulting in 1560, did not default again until 1828, when the country lapsed into a period of serial default that did not end until 1890. At this writing, Portugal has not defaulted again since. (Importantly, during a significant portion of Portugal's quiescent period, it had effectively lost its independence.)Figure 1 gives a measure of the duration of periods of recidivism during the pre-Napoleonic era for the independent (relatively) high-income countries of our sample. The the of time between default episodes (including cases in which there was no As one can see from the half of all default recurrences after a more than with a significant even after a 1. External default duration of high-income countries, of time is as the of years between two external We first the of external default then the duration of time if it was and the episodes of default crisis with and two episodes with no countries Portugal, and Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), sources cited and country external sovereign debt defaults have much in the modern most recent default in in and in (Reinhart and Rogoff interesting are the cases of and France, despite a level of defaults in its pre-Napoleonic has not defaulted on external debt since. has not defaulted on external debt since its default at the end of the Napoleonic War in would be interesting to explore whether defaults are less to than defaults, though of course over many it is the to that many countries to up large (as in the of we will consider the of our recidivism results to the of and Rogoff (2009) also show that the of long in Table 2 are quite of some of today's emerging markets, many of which have defaulted at least during the past The of emerging markets that have experienced external debt crises if one episodes in which countries default to IMF bridge In all these the countries still as were forced to fiscal as we do not include these in our although arguably from the point of view of macroeconomic and the of debt they are important. We to this issue when we IMF The and of Crises: The now to focus on the more period, to the at the same time the analysis to include banking and inflation crises, as in Table as important in this The past 2 centuries also a much of independent nations to as various regions of the world the of In Table we present of crisis measure takes the of years a country experienced of crisis (including all years and not just the by the of years since independence (or since of External and low-income Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), sources cited and is as the of years in crisis by the of years since were for country since or the country's independence countries for external default crisis and countries for inflation and banking Latin Table 3 that the between high-income countries and the of the world in to external default crisis. The average external default crisis of the high-income group is less than half of that of middle- and low-income countries and of that of Latin countries. The would be even if we only and defaults. crisis are also in the of the world than in high-income countries although the is the average of banking crises in high-income countries and in the of the world are The results in Table 3 of course, with the time line in Table that inflation and banking crisis are lower in part because the average duration of these crises to be much to external default crises. (Note also that we are years in crisis, as opposed to the of independent Table which gives the average duration of crises, the between the mean and duration of external default crises versus inflation and banking crises. The duration of banking crises is 3 years or less across all where the world for default crises is For inflation crises, the is only 1 across all this that a country can ways to on in a state of sovereign default far more than it can continue any of as during a banking or inflation the long duration of external default crises and their it is not that large of the world have been in default over much of the last years, as by Reinhart and Rogoff of the major default episodes include the Napoleonic in the early nineteenth century and then Latin countries and Portugal in the first of the The default during the era that the Great Depression and World War when at the more than 40% of the weighted by was in default on external 2 gives the share of countries in inflation crisis over the same Note the huge in inflation crises after World and II and again in the and early The very recent history of inflation most of the world a major shift from the to be whether inflation is a that has been As Rogoff (2003) has including especially the advent of independent central banks with a have been an important in this in but so was the that political on central banks to in unanticipated to be whether the period will another many in as opposed to a shift and 2. Share of countries in inflation crisis, countries that were independent in the given Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), sources cited and if one truly that fiscal dominance will never again in most countries, historical of outright default may the true the of default inflation has been effectively The recent of public debt this 3 gives the share of the world banking crises since Note the remarkably small of banking crises during the years of financial repression that during World War II and in many countries into the 1970s. By historical this was a quiescent is also from the that this era has been long but to be to an Share of countries in banking crisis, countries that were independent in the given Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), sources cited and next three the of high-income countries with of middle- and low-income countries (including Latin what we have in Table 3 but more on external debt crises, for example, illustrates two First, as middle- and low-income countries are in default on external debt a of the time than high-income countries. high-income countries had a in external defaults in the with (as of this since the advent of rates in the 1970s. we at on since the last default crisis. We from our middle- and low-income countries very low-income countries that do not have external default by of the fact that they are not able to at all on private Share of countries in external default crisis, high-income versus middle- and low-income countries. countries high-income and middle- and low-income that were independent in the given Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), sources cited and countries seem to have graduated from default crisis, or at least into But most middle- and low-income countries have not yet the of inflation crises in middle- and low-income countries versus high-income countries. countries have had inflation crises more recently than external default crises, but the has to since the early For middle- and low-income countries, a in the has been followed by a during the is of the of very high inflation we note that it does not episodes of sustained high inflation 20% that, if unanticipated and depending on the maturity structure of government debt, may a substantial de facto default on domestic Share of countries in inflation crisis, high-income versus middle- and low-income countries. countries high-income and middle- and low-income that were independent in the given Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), sources cited and on banking crises a very different data for countries begin more the line for middle- and low-income countries only in the course, many of today's countries did not their independence until One can see that in to external default and inflation crises, banking crises are (Reinhart and Rogoff 2009, chap. Although banking crises have up in

Many political economic theories use and emphasize the process of voting in their explanation of the growth of Social Security, government spending, and other public policies. But is there an empirical connection between democracy and Social Security program size or design? Using some new international data sets to produce both country-panel econometric estimates as well as case studies of South American and southern European countries, we find that Social Security policy varies according to economic and demographic factors, but that very different political histories can result in the same Social Security policy. We find little partial effect of democracy on the size of Social Security budgets, on how those budgets are allocated, or how economic and demographic factors affect Social Security. If there is any observed difference, democracies spend a little less of their GDP on Social Security, grow their budgets a bit more slowly, and cap their payroll tax more often, than do economically and demographically similar nondemocracies. Democracies and nondemocracies are equally likely to have benefit formulas inducing retirement and, conditional on GDP per capita, equally likely to induce retirement with a retirement test vs. an earnings test.

BackgroundThe continuing urbanization in China has resulted in a loss of land and rights among farmers. The social security of landless farmers has attracted considerable research attention. However, only few studies measure the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of landless farmers by employing scientific standardized scales. By using five-dimensional European quality of life (EQ-5D) scales, this study measures the HRQOL of landless farmers from a new perspective and examines how the social security policies affect their HRQOL.MethodsThis study is based on a 2013 household survey that has been conducted among 1,500 landless famers who are residing in six resettlement areas in three cities within the Yangtze River Delta region, namely, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Yangzhou. This study adopts EQ-5D scales to measure the HRQOL of these farmers. More than 50% of the respondents are in poor or non-serious health conditions, and over 50% are not satisfied with their current social security policies. The health conditions and social security policies are analyzed by multinomial regression analysis and the relationship between these two factors are analyzed via structural equation modeling (SEM).ResultsFirst, the descriptive statistical analysis shows that more than 50% of the respondents are in poor or non-serious health conditions, and that the largest proportion of these farmers are suffering from anxiety or depression, which is the most serious of the five dimensions. Second, multinomial regression analysis shows that the satisfaction of landless farmers with their social security policies improves their living conditions, particularly in their capacity for self-care, in their ability to perform daily activities, and in the reduction of pain, anxiety, and depression. Third, SEM model analysis shows that the satisfaction of landless farmers with their social security policies positively influences their HRQOL. Among the five dimensions of EQ-5D, daily activities produce the greatest influence on the HRQOL of landless farmers. As regards social security policies, the land acquisition compensation policy and the employment security policy produce the greatest and weakest influences on the HRQOL of landless farmers, respectively.ConclusionsThe rapid urbanization in China has deprived many farmers of their lands and of the benefits of urbanization. These farmers are often in a disadvantaged position in the land acquisition process. Statistic analysis in this paper shows that the satisfaction of landless farmers with their social security policies positively influences their HRQOL. The implementation and improvement of social security policies is very important for the long-term and sustainable development of these landless farmers.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the causality between social security policies and farmland reallocation in rural China.Design/methodology/approachIt quantitatively analyzes the impact of each ongoing social security policy on farmland reallocation based on a data set from the 2011 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS, 2011).FindingsThe study finds that the inclination of a village farmers’ collective to reallocate farmland due to changes in the village population increased if social security policies do not effectively cover the village because farmers rely primarily on income from farmland to cover their basic living expenses. However, if social security policies provide adequate coverage, then farmers do not rely entirely on on-farm income and the likelihood of farmland reallocation decreases. Furthermore, the effectiveness of social security policies includes not only coverage but also the sufficiency of the security policies provided.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, the authors use only cross-sectional data in this study, which may result in biased estimation and also limit temporal examination of the impact of social security systems, farmland reallocation and related policy variables. This limitation may be especially important in China because the country is undergoing a rapid socioeconomic transition. However, the research is constrained by the available data. Furthermore, there could be endogeneity problems that are difficult to address, given the current data set. These problems could involve the impacts of village-level economic, natural and social variables, the implementation of related public policies (land development and consolidation, land expropriation, etc.) and other economic variables.Practical implicationsThese findings may provide implications for related policy reform in the near future.Originality/valueThese findings may facilitate a recognition and understanding of the causality between social security policies and farmland reallocation in rural China.

In recent years, social security policy has been re-evaluated as a crucial weapon in the struggle against social injustice and poverty. The livelihoods of many people in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have largely been affected by a lack of financial resources. Many people in the region have social security. Contestably, the plight of many people in parts of this region has been exacerbated by rising unemployment. The purpose of this study is to assess the relevance and applicability of the existing social security arrangements. Existing social security strategies are fragmented and have not been inclusive enough to cater for all segments of society. The informal sector remains largely excluded from formal social security systems. A qualitative research methodology anchored on the analysis of secondary data was utilised. Collected data was analysed thematically. Findings from the systematic literature review revealed that social security systems in SSA need to evolve over time to ensure that some social security systems do not become redundant. Reforming social security systems is essential given that the environment is constantly changing. The strategies should address the emerging socio-economic challenges if they are to improve the welfare of the people. Thus, the social security needs to be reviewed and realigned with the prevailing economic situation. Progressive society has a duty to periodically assess current social security programmes to determine their applicability to current economic realities. Keywords: Social security system, Informality, Unemployment, Social exclusion, Sub-Saharan African countries

We conduct a survey of transformational towns and villages in High-tech Development District, Yaohai District and Shushan District, Hefei City. Using data, we analyze the sideline effect and inherent contradiction of transformational cities, research the policy needs for social security and its trend in the citizenization process of the peri-urban farmers. On this basis, we construct the social security policy system that can adapt to the accelerated process of urbanization. Finally, we put forth the following recommendations for the social security policy in the citizenization process of the peri-urban farmers: distinguishing different groups' policy needs for social security; attaching importance to people's dynamic policy needs for social security in urbanization; focusing on the adaptability of social security policy transformation in urbanization; attaching importance to the social psychosocial environment of social security policy transformation in urbanization; achieving the trinity of non-farm conversion, urbanization and citizenization in the process of urbanization; strengthening the government's dominant position in the building of social security policy system.