Social Citizenship for Older Persons? : Measuring the Social Quality of Social Pensions in the Global South and Explaining their Spread
Social pensions - non-contributory provisions for old age, mostly means-tested—have mushroomed in the global South since the 1990s, and have also been advocated by international organizations. Using the data base FLOORCASH constructed by the author...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/908081501836438784/Social-citizenship-for-older-persons-measuring-the-social-quality-of-social-pensions-in-the-global-south-and-explaining-their-spread http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28285 |
| Summary: | Social pensions - non-contributory
provisions for old age, mostly means-tested—have mushroomed
in the global South since the 1990s, and have also been
advocated by international organizations. Using the data
base FLOORCASH constructed by the authors and their research
team, they cover all countries of the global South, to go
beyond existing case studies and selective comparisons. The
authors investigate the contribution of social pensions to
rights-based social protection and seek to explain their
spread across the global South. While in Northern welfare
states universal social services and social insurance are
seen as the hallmarks of social citizenship as conceived by
T.H. Marshall, measured by indices such as Esping-Andersen’s
decommodification index, this paper advances a
conceptualization of social rights that includes
means-tested benefits, in order to recognize the bigger role
of non-contributory transfers in developing countries.
Applying a new measure of the social quality of social
pensions, the authors detect considerable differences
between countries, which are not reducible to the common
distinction universal vs. means-tested benefits. Combing the
social quality measure with the dimension of scale
(population covered), the authors identify four normative
models of old-age security. One of these models might herald
a new social model for the South. Finally the paper applies
event history analysis to explain the spread of social
pensions across the global South, finding that standard
domestic variables, subscription to international norms, and
pension reform events were central drivers of social pension expansion. |
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