Over the past five years, social protection has expanded dramatically around the world. In 2020, one in six people globally received government transfers. This expansion in coverage, particularly in upper- and middle-income countries, has produced a new set of beneficiaries: vulnerable, non-poor households. Scaling up the coverage of social protection programs has the potential to […]

The post Can Cash Transfers to Non-Poor Households Prevent Poverty? appeared first on Ideas Matter.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, various studies have examined how large domestic and multinational firms respond to economic shocks, including health-related ones. But there has been less focus on how family-operated micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) modify their business decisions when faced with such disruptions. Similarly, relatively little attention has been directed […]

The post When Insurance for Small Businesses Provides Broad Social Gains appeared first on Ideas Matter.

Education has long been considered a bulwark in hard times. Now new research shows that acquiring additional years of schooling can help prevent people from losing their jobs during economic downturns or recessions. But what makes acquiring education protective? Does it increase productivity? Does it enable workers to work in recession-proof sectors? Or does the […]

The post How Education Protects Workers During Recessions appeared first on Ideas Matter.

The COVID-19 pandemic has battered Latin American and Caribbean economies. Due to its large informal sectors, weak health systems, and fiscal restrictions, the region’s economy has been hit harder than any other declining by 7% last year—the largest GDP contraction since 1821. But unlike previous crises, where problems originated or were exacerbated in the financial […]

The post FINLAC: A New Initiative on Financial Inclusion to Boost Economic Recovery and Transform Lives appeared first on Ideas Matter.

Digitalization might seem to be the solution to many ills facing society. From the virtual classrooms that provide education to children in remote areas, to the telemedicine that facilitates access to health care and crowdsourcing to promote citizen participation in policy debates, it might even seem like a panacea. But digitalization’s effectiveness depends on the […]

The post Digitalization of Public Services: A Panacea? appeared first on Ideas Matter.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world faced the challenge of providing effective financial support to help citizens weather the fallout from the accompanying economic crisis. That crisis unfolded at unprecedented speed, leaving many households vulnerable to sliding into poverty before governments could design and implement new social programs. One potential […]

The post How an Existing Non-Contributory Pension Program Proved Critical During the COVID-19 Pandemic appeared first on Ideas Matter.

The development of effective vaccines against COVID-19 marks a historic breakthrough. But even if advanced economies succeed in getting most of their population vaccinated in 2021, achieving herd immunity as quickly in developing countries through vaccination will be difficult. This means that as the virus continues to spread around the globe, managing mobility restrictions smartly […]

The post COVID-19: Containment Measures and Trust appeared first on Ideas Matter.

Over the last 30 years, women have made significant gains in Latin America and the Caribbean. Maternal deaths in childbirth have dropped by more than half, young women are slightly more educated than men, and the region recorded the highest rate of convergence between male and female labor force participation from 1990-2015 compared to other […]

The post Gender Gaps in the Time of Covid-19 appeared first on Ideas Matter.

To get a better grasp of how the coronavirus pandemic is upending lives and livelihoods, we teamed up with Cornell University to carry out an online survey to measure the economic impacts of the pandemic on households in seventeen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. We found that the impacts were staggering, are closely […]

The post Coronavirus Survey Results Show Big Impacts, Linkages between Labor Markets and Inequality appeared first on Ideas Matter.

The coronavirus pandemic is having unprecedented effects on the daily lives of citizens in Latin America and the Caribbean with especially dire impacts on lower income households that range from job and income losses to a lack of information on the disease itself. The situation is changing rapidly and requires prompt policy responses. Those are […]

The post Novel Dataset Reveals the Deepening Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Inequality appeared first on Ideas Matter.

Do welfare programs create dependency? For decades, that question has roiled the United States where supporters call such programs an essential lifeline for the poor and critics condemn them as encouraging laziness and the welfare trap. Latin America and the Caribbean is no stranger to the debate, especially as it concerns  conditional cash transfer (CCT) […]

The post Cash Transfer Programs: Challenging the Welfare Myth appeared first on Ideas Matter.