International Trends on Social Protection Social Security and Employment

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International Trends on Social Protection
-Social Security and Employment

• Report-back Session for the General Assembly of
• International Social Security Association (ISSA)
• Sept 12-18
• Beijing 2004
• Karen Hui
• Hong Kong Workers Health Centre

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ISSA

• Policy makers, administrators, experts and
  scholars of social security
• Social security securing social justice
  preserving equity as a balance when achieving
  economic prosperity
• Promote social justice, equality and harmony
• Indicators of social progress and civilization
• Social stabilizers, economic shock absorber
  and an adjustor for social justice

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28th General Assembly

• Trend of globalization
• Social Security in Transition Extension of
  coverage

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Developments Trends in Social Security 2001-2003

• President of ISSA

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Social Security Extension of Coverage

• Level of pensions or unemployment benefit
  provided - too low to provide adequate
  protection?
• Exclusion from coverage? Women, migrants,
  agricultural urban informal sector workers
• Poverty - people could not access to a formal
  system of retirement income support?
• Low coverage of social insurance gt present
  problems for the individual, household, society
  and social insurance institutions?
• Social Protection sharing wealth as mechanisms
  of redistribution

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Pension System

• Privately managed pension schemes from a defined
  benefit to a defined contribution
• Choose of investment 18 of the total actually
  chose their fund, the remainder invest in the
  default fund
• People that is not enrolled in privately managed
  pension funds? the role of state.

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New Risks, New Challenges (1)

• Aging society
• longer life expectancy in old age
• decreasing fertility rate
• delayed job entry (young unemployed)
• difficulties of harmonizing work and family
  obligations
• postponed family formation and fewer births

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New Risk, New Challenge (2)

• Change in family patterns
• Decline of labor force participation for some
  groups
• Long-term unemployment
• Development of atypical jobs
• Segmented labor markets

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Filtering, tightening the rules of eligibility,
shifting part of the burden to other fields
entitlement to social security provisions is
increasingly conditional
Family
Labor Market
Individual

• Remarks Concerns
• Shift in responsibilities may not lead to shifts
  in poverty risks
• Increasing attention to work may neglect the many
  persistently poor who are also working, suggest
  that low-paying and precarious jobs better
  characterize the experience of poor household
  than does continuous exclusion from the labor
  market
• Shifting responsibility but not redistribute
  economic resources, will create new forms of
  deep-seated deprivation

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New Policies Suggested

• Joined-up policies assist in life-course than
  typical one problem / one instrument approaches
• Shifting from remedial to preventive strategies
• Social protection supported by appropriate mixes
  in macro-economic, fiscal and labor market
  policies
• Family policies
• Gender concerns

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Social Protection VS Employment

• Private provision by means of own or other
  related peoples employment
• Public social provision by means of revealed or
  expected income replacement in case of
  unemployment, sickness, disability, old ageetc.
• Individuals feeling of security not only depends
  on social protection but also on employment
  opportunities

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Employment-related Issues

• Concern of labor market participation rate
• Regular, full-time employment guarantee against
  poverty
• the labor market offers security against poverty
• New remedies activation to help individuals to
  realize economic independence
• comprising a multitude of schemes designed to
  improve the supply, employability and
  availability of labor

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Activation Approach

• initial education, adult training and career
  progression over workers life course
• Empowerment facilitating education and job
  opportunities, continuously improving employees
  skills and competences through life long learning
  and relevant training and work experience
• To enable people to engage in useful activities,
  especially for specific target group mainly for
  young unemployed, women and older people

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Work

• Make work possible
• Make work pay policies handling the unemployment
  trap, like fiscal measures, minimum wages

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Cost of Unemployment Compensation

• UC costs of a country
• 1. unemployment rate
• 2. recipiency rate
• 3. replacement rate
• For countries (HK, Australia, Mauritius, New
  Zealand) provide unemployment assistance (UA) by
  income test, on average
• Recipiency rate below the all-country average
  (0.55 0.61)
• Replacement rate is about two thirds of the
  overall average (0.24 0.36)

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Gender, Retirement and Active Ageing (1)

• Older women are more likely to live in poverty
  than older men. How can the unequal retirement
  income security of men and women be remedied?
• Women typically live longer but earn less over
  their life than men
• ISSA research project examine how different
  countries are attempting to meet this challenge,
  and the gender implications of recent social
  security reforms (7 country Finland, France,
  Republic of Korea, Latin America, Norway, Sweden
  and the UK)

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Gender, Retirement and Active Ageing (2)

• Indirect Measures unisex life tables to
  calculate pensions, minimum income guarantee,
  indexing pensions to consumer prices or wages
• Direct Measures direct compensation for
  parenting work, joint-survivor pensions,
  pension-splitting
• Work approach increase womens employment
  making it easier to combine paid employment with
  caring work (e.g. working tax credits cash
  allowances for childcare)

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Insurance against Employment Accidents and
Occupational Diseases

• Conditions for implementation or reform of an
  employment injury scheme
• Difficulties in prevention, compensation or
  rehabilitation of occupational diseases
• How to integrate prevention element in social
  security system (prevention pays for the
  insurers which provide incentives for employers
  through rebates and premiums)

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Unemployment Insurance and Employment Maintenance

• Social security in flexible labour markets How
  effective is social protection for flexible
  workers?
• Unemployment protection schemes in developing and
  transition countries
• Unemployment compensation (UC)

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Flexible Employment Social Security

• Italian Social Security Biagi Law (2003)
• Contractual patterns proposed
• Per-project employment
• Job on call
• Job sharing
• Occasional and supplementary employment
• Insertion contract
• Hiring out
• Apprenticeship contract
• Part-time contract
• Sub-contracting and lending out

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