Invited paper: Can Asia assure social insurance for all its informal workers?

This paper provides analyses on social security systems data from seven Asian countries as per ILO Convention 102 of 1952, which merges social insurance and social assistance. The former covers the basic elements – unemployment, employment, injury, old age pension and maternity benefits –, the focus of this paper. Despite high levels of per capita income and rapid growth in a majority of Asian economies, the lack of social insurance (and hence the scale of informality in the workforce) is a matter of concern. Topics discussed in this paper are barriers to social insurance schemes for informal workers, as well as the way forward.