Activity report of visit to InGRID
research infrastructures
Please limit the report to max. 3-5 pages, including tables and
figures and use the following structure as much as possible.
Name and last name
Tobias Böger
Project title
Institutional Social assistance data for developing countries
Abstract (max 300-500 words)
While research on social policy in development contexts is slowly gaining ground, institutional data
on social policies in these countries is still in its infancy. Whereas research on western welfare states
can rely on two datasets – CWED and SCIP – to analyze and explain the development of social
rights, no similar data is available for the rest of the world. It comes at no surprise that expansion
of these datasets beyond their original context is on the agenda of the respective research
institutions. But such data has focused on measuring social citizenship rights in terms of the
institutional characteristics of social insurance. It's questionable whether the indicators collected in
these datasets present an adequate picture of social rights in the context of largely informal labor
markets and meager coverage rates of social insurance, especially among the poor. Assuming that
social assistance rather than social insurance is fundamental in providing social rights the project
aims to create institutional data for social assistance policies in a few selected developing countries
and thus map the development of social rights in these countries. On the one hand it thus tries to
understand social policy in development contexts in terms of social rights, a concept originating in
the research on industrialized welfare democracies; on the other hand it shifts attention away from
those institutions, which have been deemed the indispensable core of social citizenship.
Introduction and motivation of visit
Using data collected by the FLOOR project (www.floorgroup.de), which has created an inventory
of all social assistance (and other non-contributory) transfers in developing countries, expand the
SaMIP data set to cover selected developing countries and thus facilitate cross-national comparison
beyond the OECD context it originated in.
Scientific objectives of visit
The collection and generation of institutional social assistance data in context of the SaMIP
framework will a) generate insights into the development of a fundamental social policy in
developing countries; b) allow comparison of benefit levels for low income households between
industrialized welfare democracies and developing countries; c) determine whether the social
assistance programs in developing countries are moving towards convergence with industrialized
welfare democracies over time; d) provide new cases to test generalized hypothesis of the causes
and consequences of social policies; e) offer institutional context information to researchers
interested in micro-level outcomes of social policies.
Reasons for choosing research infrastructure and datasets/surveys/...
SaMIP originated at SOFI, so the direct contact to its maintainer(s) Prof. Kenneth Nelson eased
the addition of further countries as well as providing the possibility to discuss problems with the
existing dataset.
Activities during your visit (research, training, events, ...)
Added the following countries to SaMIP: South Africa, Namibia, South Korea, Armenia, Argentina,
Costa Rica, Chile, Georgia, Uruguay, Mauritius, Jamaica, Guatemala
2
Preliminary project results and conclusions / Outcomes and future studies
The added social assistance data will be used to write a paper reflecting on the difficulties of
transposing the concept of model families and social rights, originally conceived in the research on
western welfare states, to development contexts and show how social assistance in these context
does not provide minimum income protection in the ambitious sense, but is rather aimed at
poverty reduction. The following figures give a brief glimpse of the data added to SaMIP:
References
Single person household without children
USA
KOR
SWE
PRT
GBR
ESP
AUS
DEU
ZAF
NAM
MUS
URY
CRI
BRA
ARG
ARM
0
50
100
% of minimum wage
150
MIP benefit levels (2010)
Lone parent type-case
0
50
100
150
200
Two-parent family type-case
2000
2005
2010
2015
Year
ARM
GEO
ARG
BRA
URY
MUS
NAM
ZAF
CRI
3