Paper

Reaching Households in Emerging and Developing Economies: Citizen ID, Socioeconomic Data, and Digital Delivery

How can policy makers in emerging and low-income countries support workers and households during crisis?

A key challenge facing policy makers is how to protect households during an economic crisis. Reaching affected groups requires sufficient information on key household characteristics (such as income and household composition) as well as a reliable delivery system to ensure support reaches the intended beneficiaries.

This creates particular challenges for emerging and low-income countries with large informal sectors and therefore limited sources of information on employment and income for most of their population. This note discusses the importance of citizen ID systems, integrated socioeconomic databases, and digital delivery systems in extending coverage of social protection in such contexts.

About this Publication

Published