Old-age pensions are the most widespread social security programmes around the world. While many case studies have focused on the historical origins of old-age pensions, global and comparative studies are limited mainly due to missing data. To address this shortcoming, this article introduces the novel PENLEG dataset (Pension Legislation around the World, 1880–2010), which comprises data on: (1) the timing of the first pension introductions; (2) the pension design; (3) the mode of financing; (4) eligibility criteria; (5) benefit generosity and (6) coverage rates for all independent countries. Additionally, the article describes global pension patterns and highlights case evidence. It shows that economic development strategies, political incentives to bind citizens to the state, administrative reasons as well as colonial legacies and the Soviet model of social security have strongly affected the origins of old-age pensions.
Global studies on the historical origins of old-age pensions from a political regime perspective are quite rare. Based on the novel PENLEG dataset this article shows that democratic and nondemocratic regimes had different policy priorities when designing old-age pensions for the first time. Whereas democracies had significantly higher legal pension coverage rates than nondemocratic regimes, the reverse pattern can be found for pension replacement rates. The study also shows that temporal effects and colonial legacy mattered. Longstanding democracies introduced much higher legal pension coverage rates than countries that had recently democratized. Additionally, the French colonial legacy spurred high legal pension coverage rates in African autocracies. These findings underline the importance of taking the multidimensionality of welfare programs into account when analyzing political regime differences. Moreover, due attention must be paid to the historical context when theorizing about welfare policies from a political regime perspective.
Social policy is an important instrument states have at their disposal to offer protection against life risks. Yet nearly one century after the foundation of the International Labour Organization (ILO) the majority of the world population still lives without adequate social protection and even in the Western world many observers fear that globalization is undermining the welfare state. Based on various data sources we illustrate the development of social security around the world. We show that more and more states introduce social security programs and increase their social spending. Furthermore, new social policy programs have emerged which cover formerly marginalized groups of society.
O presente artigo tem o intuito de apresentar e contextualizar através dos símbolos e mitos constituintes da experiência religiosa do subcontinente indiano, a pluralidade de representações e funções do feminino. O imaginário religioso hindu aponta para um campo amplo e fértil de imanência do princípio feminino ontológico, que se traduz numa composição simbólica múltipla. Esta riqueza da simbologia do feminino religioso se expressa de maneira heterogênea nas mais diversas representações das deusas, tradicionalmente divididas em dois principais eixos, a saber: as deusas benevolentes que geralmente aparecem como consortes das deidades masculinas e as deusas ferozes, independentes e geralmente associadas ao princípio absoluto transcendente-imanente, brahman.
When implementing their first old-age pensions after independence, all former French colonies opted for a social insurance design, following the role model of their colonial power (Schmitt, Social Security Development and the Colonial Legacy. World Development 70: 2015, 332–342). But to what extent did the French colonial legacy also affect other dimensions of old-age protection programmes in Africa? This chapter shows that most Francophone African countries used the broad definition of a wage worker enshrined in the colonial “Labour Code for Overseas Territories” from 1952 to define the group of pension beneficiaries. This definition was especially chosen in aspiration of industrialisation. However, it did not correspond with the socio-economic reality of most of these countries. Still today, the number of wage workers in former French colonies is low, hampering a broader coverage of pension systems.
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