The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Social protection shields workers and families from loss of income through unemployment, sickness, injury, maternity, disability and old age. Coverage is far from universal, and informal, platform and self-employed workers are often left out. This page sets out how social protection supports workers through change, how coverage and adequacy are measured, and what evidence serves the ministries and social security institutions responsible.
GCRI · In development · service level R0
Social protection for workers is the set of benefits and services that protect people against loss of income from unemployment, sickness, injury, maternity, disability and old age. Coverage follows formal employment, adequacy matters as much as coverage, and systems that scale up in shocks protect more people.
Population density, night-time lights, air quality, heat and floods, framed on Southeast Asia; each layer is a dated NASA product.
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People and exposure
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Natural Earth
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Population density, night-time lights, air quality, heat and floods, framed on Southeast Asia.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
Layers and dates
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Work and social protection · Labour market A · Year 2
| Clerical support | 29,724 | 0.7 | Substitute | Data operations |
| Machine operators | 55,701 | 0.7 | Mixed | Robot maintenance |
| Care workers | 29,734 | 0.1 | Complement | Upskill |
| Analysts | 18,145 | 0.5 | Complement | Upskill |
Income, inequality and transition safeguards. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Contributory schemes reach workers with formal contracts. Informal and self-employed workers often have no unemployment or sickness cover.
Unemployment benefits and active labour market programmes let displaced workers search and retrain rather than take any job.
Benefits that are too low or too short leave workers in poverty even when they are covered.
Systems that can expand quickly, as many did during the pandemic, protect more people in crises.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Social protection floor | Basic social security guarantees securing health care and income across the life course. |
| Replacement rate | The share of a worker's previous earnings that a benefit replaces. |
| Contributory scheme | A social insurance scheme financed by contributions from workers and employers. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Population covered by at least one social protection benefit | percent | per assessment | ILO World Social Protection data | OFFICIAL |
| Unemployed receiving benefits | percent of unemployed | annual | Social security records | OFFICIAL |
| Employment injury coverage | percent of labour force | per assessment | ILO data | OFFICIAL |
| Pension coverage | percent above statutory pensionable age receiving a pension | per assessment | ILO data | OFFICIAL |
| Benefit replacement rate | percent of previous earnings | per assessment | Benefit rules and models | ESTIMATED |
| Spending on active labour market programmes | percent of GDP | annual | Labour market programme statistics | OFFICIAL |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| ILO World Social Protection Report and data | Coverage and spending by function and country | Open, CC BY 4.0 |
| OECD tax-benefit models and labour market programme data | Benefit adequacy and programme spending | Public, OECD terms |
| World Bank ASPIRE database | Social protection and labour programme data | Open, CC BY 4.0 |
| ISSA social security country profiles | Social security programmes worldwide | Public, ISSA terms (to check) |
| National social security administrative data | Beneficiaries and payments | Licence per institution |
Future of Work and Skills prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Ministries of labour and social affairs | How to extend coverage and improve adequacy | Coverage and adequacy profiles |
| Social security institutions | How to include informal and self-employed workers | Coverage analyses |
| Finance ministries | How to fund protection sustainably | Spending and coverage evidence |
Many social insurance schemes were built for long-term employees with a single employer. Self-employed, part-time, temporary and platform workers often contribute less and are entitled to less, or nothing. Large informal sectors in many countries mean most workers have no contributory protection at all.
When shocks hit, such as a recession, a pandemic or a regional plant closure, gaps in protection turn job loss into poverty, with lasting effects on health and children's prospects. Well-designed systems act as automatic stabilisers for the economy as well as safeguards for households.
Measuring who is eligible and who actually receives benefits, using economics and development economics. Take-up is often lower than eligibility.
Modelling the effects of benefit and tax rules on household incomes. Models depend on survey data quality.
Assessing active labour market programmes and income support, using econometrics. Effects vary by design and context.
Tracking income and wealth distribution, with social and behavioural science. Top incomes and informal income are hard to measure.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.