Art Appraisal Blog

This policy research brief analyses how digitalisation can facilitate rural populations’ access to effective and adequate social protection and economic inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean. It investigates the region’s social protection response to COVID-19 and highlights three good practices in providing digitalised social protection to vulnerable rural populations during the crisis. Based on this analysis and considering the local obstacles to digitalised social protection in rural areas, recommendations...

The COVID-19 crisis revealed that income support systems in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region were both fundamental and insufficient. This paper by the Inter-American Development Bank presents novel estimates of the coverage and beneficiary distribution of all non-contributory cash transfers both before and during the COVID-19 crisis. It also discusses the tools and methods used by individual countries in their response, placing digital G2P initiatives within a larger...

This World Bank blog post outlines Paraguay’s Pytyvõ program, which reached a considerable number of the country’s households in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Paraguay achieved this despite lacking a comprehensive social registry at the onset of the crisis, and relied heavily on electronic wallets to distribute benefits.

This report summarizes a 2021 workshop hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean on the experience of Latin American countries in using digitized social protection in response to COVID-19. It includes discussions of quickly updating existing records and developing interoperable data systems. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for having different channels for updating information...

To provide an effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and foster an appropriate environment for economic recovery, LAC governments need to reach a holistic, up-to-date understanding of the resources available to them. Adopting a treasury single account (TSA) and digitizing revenue collection may help achieve these objectives.This study shows that improving treasury management in LAC by implementing TSAs and digitizing revenue collection and payments could generate potential annual savings of...

Colombia's Ingreso Solidario COVID-19 cash transfer program increased eligible households’ probability of maintaining an income source during the pandemic and did not disincentivize labor market participation.

Integrating information for the purpose of articulating social protection policies is hard work. It requires a combination of political will, capacity for institutional cooperation, software development and direct communication channels with citizens. Because of this complexity, countries that pursue this objective often cooperate to exchange knowledge, and the Brazilian Single Registry (Cadastro Único), the backbone of some 20 social protection programmes, is frequently cited as a successful example of integration....

The financial impact of COVID-19 has been hitting the poor. Governments are adjusting cash transfer programs and utilizing national payment systems to mitigate these negative impacts. This blog reviews responses from Latin America, Asia and Sub Saharan Africa where governments with limited resources are coming up with innovative solutions to the crisis.