Data

Share of population covered by social protection

What you should know about this indicator

Coverage of social protection and labor programs (SPL) shows the percentage of population participating in social insurance, social safety net, and unemployment benefits and active labor market programs. Estimates include both direct and indirect beneficiaries.

Limitations and exceptions: When interpreting ASPIRE performance indicators based on household surveys, it is important to note that the extent to which information on specific transfers and programs is captured in the household surveys can vary a lot across countries. Moreover, household surveys do not capture the universe of social protection programs in the country, in best practice cases just the largest programs. As a consequence, ASPIRE indicators are not fully comparable across program categories and countries; however, they provide approximate measures of social protection systems performance. In addition, there may be cases where ASPIRE performance indicators differ from official WB country reports as ASPIRE indicators are based on a first level analysis of original survey data and unified methodology that does not necessarily reflect country-specific knowledge and in depth country analysis relying on administrative program level data and/or imputations.

Source
Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 20, 2024
Next expected update
May 2025
Date range
1998–2021
Unit
% of population

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The World Development Indicators (WDI) is the primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources. It presents the most current and accurate global development data available, and includes national, regional and global estimates.

Retrieved on
May 20, 2024
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI).

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of population covered by social protection”. Our World in Data (2024). Data adapted from World Bank. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-covered-by-social-protection [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Share of population covered by social protection” [dataset]. World Bank, “World Development Indicators” [original data]. Retrieved July 4, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-population-covered-by-social-protection