2025-04-20-世界银行-世界银行年社会保障状况报告_20亿人的挑战（英）_120页_4mb

State of Social Protection Report 2025: The 2-Billion-Person Challenge Summary

Key Findings

1. Coverage Gap

   • 2 billion people in low- and middle-income countries remain uncovered or inadequately covered by social protection systems.
   • LICs (Low-Income Countries) have the largest gaps, with 78% of the population missing social protection.
   • Sub-Saharan Africa shows the highest coverage failure, affecting 94% of its population.
   • Even in MICs (Middle-Income Countries), 400 million people receive insufficient benefits.

2. Adequacy of Benefits

   • Social protection benefits account for 27% of beneficiaries' welfare on average.
   • In LICs, social assistance transfers average 11% of household income, with large disparities in benefits by gender and income level.
   • Women receive 81% of male transfers, while contributory pensions are 33% of household welfare in UMICs.

3. Financing and Efficiency

   • Spending on social protection ranges from 0.23% of GDP in LICs to 6.6% in UMICs and HICs.
   • LICs rely heavily on international grants (67% of social assistance funding).
   • Replacing regressive subsidies (e.g., fossil fuel subsidies costing ~$7 trillion annually) with targeted transfers can free resources for social protection.

4. Shock Response and Delivery Systems

   • Social protection systems expanded significantly during COVID-19, with 28% higher per capita spending in 2020–2021.
   • Stronger delivery systems (e.g., digital registries, digital payments) improved crisis responses.
   • Countries with pre-existing coverage and higher spending were quicker to expand during shocks.

5. Policy Action Areas

   • Extend coverage: Focus on noncontributory programs in LICs, expand contributory systems in MICs.
   • Strengthen adequacy: Improve targeting to reduce extreme poverty (e.g., efficiency gains from better targeting could reduce income shortfall by up to 8% in LICs).
   • Build shock resilience: Integrate adaptive features (e.g., early warning systems, climate vulnerability criteria) into social protection.
   • Optimize financing: Realize savings from subsidy reforms, blend domestic and external funds.

Conclusion

The report advocates for a comprehensive, integrated social protection system to address global challenges like climate change, conflict, and digitalization. Low- and middle-income countries must focus on targeted noncontributory transfers, while upper-middle-income countries should expand contributory schemes and integrate labor market programs. Strengthening delivery systems and fostering data-driven policies are critical to achieving universal social protection by 2030.