October 2020

12Oct

Canada. Commission on Aging to hear about COVID-19 impact on elderly at Oct. 21 meeting

The meeting, which takes place Wednesday, Oct. 21 at 4:30 p.m., will feature community resource organizations that assist and/or provide older adults with their everyday needs, such as food, supplies and medications The commission wants to hear how COVID-19 has impacted the older adults they serve and how they have modified their services during the pandemic. The presenters include: Mikayla Springob, Area Agency on Aging and Disabilities of SW Washington Emily Kaleel, Clark County Food Bank Jeananne Edwards, Human...

October 12, 2020
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09Oct

Latin America’s new poor

When the pandemic struck Piura, a city in northern Peru, Daniel Zapata had a part-time job with a market-research firm. The 250 soles ($70) he earned each month paid his fees for a three-year course in business administration. The covid-19 recession put paid to all that. The firm closed, and Mr Zapata, who is 20 and lives with his parents and a sister, has dropped out of his course. The family received 760 soles in emergency aid from Peru’s...

October 9, 2020
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September 2020

30Sep

Australia. New report warns JobSeeker is a ’pre-age pension’

JobSeeker payments are becoming the new “pre-age pension” as the number of older Australians signing up for the dole grows, a new report warns. Parliamentary Budget Office analysis reveals the typical welfare recipient is now an older person rather than a younger man. The reports also shows an increasing share of older Australians and women are relying on the payment for longer periods of time. “JobSeeker appears to be functioning as a kind of pre-age pension payment for some...

September 30, 2020
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28Sep

US. Indiana increased public pension assets despite pandemic

Indiana’s public pension funds for state and local government employees, including teachers, has apparently weathered the financial markets’ volatility during the coronavirus pandemic, new data from the state show. The General Assembly’s Pension Management Oversight Committee heard Wednesday that the Indiana Public Retirement System increased its pension assets by 2.56% to $30.6 billion during the 2020 budget year, which ran from July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2020. Read More @SFChronicle

September 28, 2020
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28Sep

The Covid-19 wake-up call to buttress social investment

The temptation to cut welfare expenditures to reduce deficits inflated by the pandemic must be resisted. Barely having had time to absorb the economic and social aftershocks of the Great Recession, the world is confronted with an even more disruptive exogenous shock—the coronavirus pandemic, costing above all human lives but also causing massive dislocation. As employment opportunities for Millennials are undermined, low-wage stagnation for essential workers is reinforced and work-life balance stresses for women are intensified, the resilience of the European...

September 28, 2020
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10Sep

US. Pension fund, MIT launch social investing project

The Massachusetts state pension fund is teaming up with the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative to try to improve the data available to investors who want to make decisions based on things like the way a company treats its workers, its carbon emissions or its product safety record. As socially responsible investing expands rapidly across the globe, the Aggregate Confusion Project with the Pension Reserves Investment Management Board aims to cut through the noise around Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)...

September 10, 2020
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09Sep

Using behavioral insights to make the most of emergency social protection cash transfers

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries across the globe have been adapting social assistance policies to support their populations. In fact, since March 2020, 139 countries and territories have planned, implemented, or adapted cash transfers to support their citizens. Cash transfers specifically make up about half of the social protection programs implemented to address the pandemic. Now more than ever, it’s crucial that such programs are designed to maximize impacts. Behavioral insights can be mobilized as a cost-effective...

September 9, 2020
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04Sep

The Battle for Social Investment

By Emilio Basavilbaso Today we find different visions regarding investments in Social Welfare Policy. So far we are fine, the problem begins when we cannot listen to those who think differently. Some phenomena that are occurring in the world make this more and more complicated. We tend to associate with people who think like us and agreeing is increasingly difficult. A ¨crack¨ opens between one another, which is increasingly difficult to close. And by not knowing, we tend to...

September 4, 2020
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August 2020

28Aug

Job and Wage Losses in Informal Sector due to the COVID-19 Lockdown Measures in India

By Xavier Estupinan, Mohit Sharma This paper estimates the job and wage losses of workers, using the lens of informality, due to lockdown measures undertaken by the Government of India to tackle the spread of COVID-19. It focuses on the first two lockdowns when containment measures in India were most stringent in the world. We estimate that 104 million and 69.4 million informally employed workers were at risk of job loss in Lockdown 1.0 and Lockdown 2.0 respectively. Informal...

August 28, 2020
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28Aug

COVID-19 Infections, Labour Market Shocks, and Subjective Well-Being

By Ferdi Botha, John P. Haisken-DeNew This is the first paper to present novel findings on how simultaneously (a) labour market shocks and (b) infections in the household, directly due to COVID-19, have impacted on life satisfaction and domain satisfactions. Using data from a world-wide online survey of almost 5,700 respondents across six countries, we estimate the associations of COVID-19-related labour market shocks and COVID-19 infection with life satisfaction and a range of domain satisfactions. Directly due to COVID-19,...

August 28, 2020
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