Advanced Search
Search Results
49 results found
Financing a sustainable urban future requires governments to shift their focus from taxing the informal economy to providing urban infrastructure, high-quality public services and inclusive urban design. At the same time, governments would do well to focus their tax collection efforts on the wealthy...
Challenges and strategies to increase social protection financing for workers in informal employment
This briefing note reviews the current debates about strategies to increase financing for social protection, which is essentially to enable the extension of coverage to workers in informal employment. The social protection financing gap is described and different approaches to close the gap are...
India’s welfare boards have existed for more than half a century and represent a unique approach to ensuring the sustainable and fair financing for informal workers’ social protection. Based on a review of the literature and interviews with workers, employers, government officials and experts, this...
The 2020 global pandemic catalyzed great interest in the potential of social protection to support incomes and livelihoods during times of crisis, with cash transfers getting particular attention. Also during this period, the debate around basic incomes, universal basic income (UBI) and other types...
In the wake of the pandemic, developing and middle-income countries are facing increasing pressure to improve domestic resource mobilization. As many of these countries have large informal economies, increasing the tax contributions of the informal sector has become a popular policy choice. Many of...
The appointment of Federico Parra as Social and Solidarity Economy Specialist is WIEGO’s response to the need to support initiatives of workers in informal employment that fall within the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE). In this Q&A, Federico explains what his role will entail.
This paper brings together existing evidence on the impact of social security contributions on labour markets, insights from public finance theory and experiences of countries that have reduced social security contributions in an effort to increase formal employment. It shows that social...
This Working Paper uses the roll-out of Mexico’s Seguro Popular across municipalities to quantitatively assess its impact on private sector formal employment in Mexico, using more detailed data and improved econometric methods compared to previous papers.
While debates about taxation and social protection in relation to the informal economy are widespread, there is little empirical evidence to support them. Using new and representative data on informal workers in Accra, Ghana, this paper contributes novel evidence on the extent to which informal...
The TUC–UNIWA Informal Sector Pension Scheme was established in Ghana in 2017 by the Union of Informal Workers Associations (UNIWA) as a registered as a voluntary group pension scheme with the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA). Despite its flexible contribution regime, the scheme has...
Videos / Slideshows / Audio
Millions of women work long hours, in dangerous conditions, for little pay. They are fighting for change, with the help of ILO Convention 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers. Watch this video to learn how.
Workers Education/Organizing Materials
This manual helps street vendors learn more about the regulations that govern public space and how to defend the right to work in public space. It describes successful actions taken by street vendor organizations. And it offers information to help you organize and negotiate with local government.
WIEGO Working Papers
Mike Rogan reviews how informal workers are taxed, why there is growing interest in taxing them, and whether they should be included in the tax net.