CANCELLED - Launch of World Bank white paper - Protecting All: Risk-Sharing in a Diverse and Diversifying World

Event cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances

On 4 November Truman Packard will visit UNU-WIDER to launch the World Bank’s new white paper, Protecting All: Risk-Sharing in a Diverse and Diversifying World.

The rapidly changing nature of work at all income levels requires a dramatically new approach to social protection and labour policy, according to the white paper, which analyses how drivers of disruption are challenging the viability of the social contract in low-, middle-, and high-income countries. The paper proposes an approach to worker protection and social security that is better adapted to an increasingly diverse and fluid world of work.

In developing countries, up to 80% of workers earn their living in the informal economy. Hence traditional, employment-based social protection policies fail to provide effective protection from risk and uncertainty. Meanwhile, in richer countries, technological change is changing the nature of work, making long-term employment less common. Work is also growing more diverse with the rise of the ‘gig economy’ and the trend toward workers having a ‘portfolio’ of jobs.

Truman Packard is a Lead Economist at the World bank and main author of Protecting All: Risk-Sharing in a Diverse and Diversifying World. He joined the World Bank staff in 1997 and is currently a Lead Economist in its Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice, working on labor market policy in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Trained as a labor economist, Truman’s work has focused primarily on the impact of social insurance—including pensions, unemployment insurance, and health coverage—on household labor supply decisions, employment outcomes, saving behavior, and risk management. Truman holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oxford

Spaces are limited, please reserve your seat by registering early.