2 July, 2024
The report is about how to have better social protection for more workers in Latin America. According to the report, informality is a long-standing structural challenge of Latin American labor markets, with almost half of people in the region living in a household that relies exclusively on informal employment. Informal workers are often insufficiently covered by social protection policies, for which eligibility is often linked to employment in the formal sector. The need to reform social protection systems in Latin America to make them more effective and fiscally sustainable has become more evident following the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper argues that a basic set of social protection benefits available to all workers, whether they work in the formal or informal sector, should and can be established, although it would require the ability to raise additional tax revenues. In addition, incentives for formal job creation would be strengthened if their main source of financing for that basic social protection were shifted to general tax revenues, rather than social security contributions, which tend to increase the cost of formal job creation. The report stresses that reforming social protection systems will not be easy, but these reforms can provide the basis for stronger and more inclusive growth in Latin America.
2 July, 2024
22 April, 2024
17 April, 2024