Access to at least a basic level of social protection is a human right. The principle of universality of social protection demonstrates the importance of social protection systems in guaranteeing decent living conditions to the whole population, throughout their lives. The proportion of the population covered by social protection systems or floors provides an indication of the extent to which universality is accomplished, and thus, how secure are the population’s living conditions – including improvements in child well-being and reduction of child poverty.

Measurements of effective coverage should reflect how, in reality, legal provisions are implemented. It refers to the percentage of people actually receiving benefits of contributory and non-contributory social protection programmes, plus the number of persons actively contributing to social insurance schemes.

Social protection systems include contributory and non-contributory schemes for children, pregnant women with newborns, people in active age, older persons, for victims of work injuries and persons with disabilities. Social protection floors provide at least a basic level in all main contingencies along the life cycle, as defined in the Social Protection Floors Recommendation 2012 (no. 202) referred to in SDG 1.3.

When assessing coverage and gaps in coverage based on administrative surveys, distinctions need to be made between coverage by:

1. Contributory social insurance;
2. Universal schemes covering all residents (or all residents in a given category) and
3. Means-tested schemes potentially covering all those who pass the required test of income and/or assets

The indicator based on household surveys is estimated by programme type, for the entire population and by quintiles of both the post- and pre-transfer welfare distribution. Programmes are aggregated into social assistance, social insurance and labor market. Indicators provide the totals summing up the social assistance, social insurance and labor market figures.

It is important to note that the extent to which information on specific transfers and programmes is captured in the household surveys can vary a lot across countries. Often household surveys do not capture the universe of social protection and labor programmes in the country, in best practice cases just the largest programmes. Many household surveys have limited information on these programmes, some surveys collect information only on participation without including the transfer amounts; and others include programme information mixed with private transfers, making it difficult to isolate individual SPL programmes.

Therefore, information based on household surveys is limited to what is captured by them and does not necessarily represent the universe of programmes existing in the country. In addition, the availability of these indicators depends on the type of questions included in the survey. If transfer amounts are available, for example, adequacy and impact on poverty indicators can be generated. If only programme participation questions are included in the survey, only non- monetary indicators can be generated such as coverage or beneficiary incidence. As a consequence, performance indicators are not fully comparable across harmonized programme categories and countries. Moreover, these indicators do not include (in the current edition) those who are protected by law, or those who have benefits guaranteed but are not necessarily receiving them at the time the survey is administered – for example people who actively contribute to old-age pensions and are entitled to the benefits on reaching retirement age.

However, household surveys have the unique advantages of allowing analysis of programme impact on household welfare. With such caveats in mind, indicators based on household surveys provide an approximate measure of social protection systems performance.

Calculations include separate indicators in order to distinguish between effective coverage for children, unemployed persons, older persons and persons with disabilities, mothers with newborns, workers protected in case of work injury, and the poor and marginalized, when using administrative surveys. For each case, coverage is expressed as a share of the respective population.

Data are collected through an administrative survey ongoing for decades, the ILO Social Security Inquiry. Whenever countries provide data, the indicator is disaggregated by sex. Indicators for effective coverage are obtained as follows:

1. Proportion of children covered by social protection benefits: ratio of children/households receiving child or family cash benefits to the total number of children/households with children

2. Proportion of women giving birth covered by maternity benefits: ratio of women receiving cash maternity benefits to women giving birth in the same year (estimated based on age-specific fertility rates published in the UN’s World Population Prospects or on the number of live births corrected for the share of twin and triplet births)

3. Proportion of persons with disabilities receiving benefits: ratio of persons receiving disability cash benefits to persons with severe disabilities. The latter is calculated as the product of prevalence of disability ratios (published for each country group by the World Health Organization) and each country’s population

4. Proportion of unemployed receiving benefits: ratio of recipients of unemployment cash benefits to the number of unemployed persons

5. Proportion of workers covered in case of employment injury: ratio of workers protected by injury insurance to total employment or the labour force

6. Proportion of older persons receiving a pension: ratio of persons above statutory retirement age receiving an old-age pension to persons above statutory retirement age (including contributory and non-contributory)

7. Proportion of persons who may need benefits receiving them: ratio of social assistance recipients to the total number of persons who might need them. The latter are calculated by subtracting from total population all people of working age who are contributing to a social insurance scheme or receiving contributory benefits, and all persons above retirement age receiving contributory benefits

The aggregate indicator is calculated as the proportion of the total population receiving cash benefits under at least one of the contingencies (contributory or non-contributory benefit) or actively contributing to at least one social security scheme.

Coverage based on data calculated from national representative household surveys are collected in The Atlas of Social Protection – Indicators of Resilience and Equity (ASPIRE) by the World Bank. These indicators refer to the ‘effective’ coverage definition, measuring the direct and indirect beneficiaries who are actually receiving social protection benefits at the time nationally representative household survey data are collected, as within a target group (total population, for different income quintiles, total population in urban and rural areas).

Generally, these indicators are based on a first level analysis of original household survey data (with no imputations) and on a unified methodology that does not necessarily reflect country-specific knowledge and in-depth country analysis relying on different data sources (administrative programme level data).

Disaggregation would be possible by sex, age group, income quintiles, etc.

No imputation

The regional and global aggregates are calculated from the most recent values of country data since 2000. No imputation is performed.

Regional and global estimates are calculated as the average of all country data available, weighted by countries’ population.

While efforts are made to ensure consistency between ASPIRE indicators and World Bank’s regional and country reports/national estimates, there may still be cases where ASPIRE performance indicators differ from official WB country reports/national estimates.

Data Availability 2010 to present (measured in terms of how many countries have at least 1 data point after 2010 for this indicator:
Asia and Pacific: 19; Africa: 37; Latin America and Caribbean: 18; Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan: 15.
Data Availability (2000-2009)

Asia and Pacific: 33; Africa: 37; Latin America and Caribbean: 22; Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan: 21

Data are based on national representative household surveys. Data source is ASPIRE: The Atlas of Social Protection – Indicators of Resilience and Equity, The World Bank (see datatopics.worldbank.org/aspire/)

Unit-record data of national household surveys are collected by national governments and given to the World Bank for analytical purposes. The ASPIRE team harmonizes these household surveys to make them reasonably comparable across country and over time.

The ASPIRE harmonization methodology for household survey data rests on the following three steps:

1. Identification and classification of Social Protection and Labor (SPL) benefits and services

Household surveys are carefully reviewed to identify SPL program information. Once this information is located, two levels of analysis are implemented: first, variables are created for each of the country specific programs found in the survey. If the original program name is not provided in the survey instrument, the variable will report the corresponding ASPIRE’s program subcategories according to how the question is framed and country context.

Additionally, program variables are aggregated and harmonized into 12 SPL program categories, and 2 private transfer categories. The country specific programs included into these main SPL categories are documented in detail below and are validated with WB country task teams in close coordination with national counterparts.

In order to generate the indicators, the following variables are also harmonized: household identification number, location (urban/rural), household size, adult equivalent household size, welfare aggregate, household weight and poverty line, defined as the poorest 20% of the welfare distribution.

2. Welfare aggregates

Households are ranked in quintiles of the welfare distribution (either household total income or consumption). Special efforts are made to include the most recently updated welfare aggregates officially agreed with National Statistical Offices and /or harmonized by regional poverty teams (or the Socio- Economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean – SEDLAC) in the case of Latin American countries and the ECAPOV database in the case of Eastern Europe and Central Asian countries. These welfare aggregates are also consistent with the ones used by World Bank PovcalNet poverty estimates.

3. PPP conversions

All monetary variables (transfer amounts) and the welfare aggregate are deflated to 2005 values and then converted to international US Dollars according to the following: [all transfers and welfare (t) / CPI (2005)] / [ICP (2005)] where ICP (2005) is the PPP conversion factor base 2005 of private consumption.

Once the information is harmonized performance indicators are generated using ADePT SP software.

Ongoing process

Ongoing process

ASPIRE: The Atlas of Social Protection – Indicators of Resilience and Equity, The World Bank (datatopics.worldbank.org/aspire/).