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This paper analyzes the incentives to labor supply faced by families, particularly mothers, with young children in the context of a recently introduced fertility promotion benefit in Poland. The paper is based on an adapted version of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Tax-Benefit Model, which estimates households' net earnings after taxes and social transfers at different levels of wages. Since the recent introduction of the 500 benefit, some households face steep marginal tax rates due to the benefit withdrawal rules. Single parents with two children, and second earners with one child can expect their income to increase by only 30 and 25 percent of the minimum wage, respectively, if they take up a job at minimum wage. If they must also pay for childcare, having all adults working can cause losses of up to 30 percent compared with if one adult stayed home. Although the 500 program radically contributed to reducing child poverty, in the absence of complementary reforms, these disincentives could affect more than half a million households, disproportionately in the lowest quintile. Vouchers for private childcare have been adopted by some municipalities in Poland to counter unmet demand for public nurseries. A 75 percent subsidy of typical childcare costs would restore the financial viability of low-paying work for mothers with young children. Alternative remedies include a reform of the eligibility and withdrawal rules of the 500+ program.

Access of Poor to Social Services --- Child Care --- Disability --- Economic Assistance --- Economics & Gender --- Female Labor --- Fertility --- Force Participation --- Gender --- Gender & Poverty --- Gender and Economic Policy --- Gender and Economics --- Poverty Reduction --- Services & Transfers to Poor --- Social Assistance --- Technology Industry --- Technology Innovation --- Women

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The objective of this policy note is to develop a set of actionable recommendations for tackling poverty and social exclusion in Poland based on evidence. In recent years, the World Bank has deepened its engagement in Poland around issues of social inclusion, through work on effective labor market and activation policies, social assistance benefits, and investment financing for local social inclusion initiatives. This note purports to integrate the outputs of these activities and complement them with insights from the new analytical work to develop recommendations for the government of Poland for program choices to enhance the impact of inclusion programs and employment services. This policy note is structured as follows: (i) introduction; (ii) section two provides a definition of social inclusion and describes the country context by key trends and key groups at risk of social exclusion; (iii) section three provides an overview of the institutional set-up to deliver policies for social inclusion at the national and local level and presents an assessment of the achievements and challenges of key policy instruments (employment services, social benefits, social services, and the work of civil society); (iv) section four focuses on two recent operational experiences of relevance to a future operation: an assessment of the execution of the European Social Fund in Poland against the social and labor agendas and a presentation of the learning generated through the social inclusion component of the World Bank Post Accession Rural Support Project; and (v) section five illustrates areas for potential intervention at the policy and operational level in Poland. Recognizing that social inclusion outcomes are the result of a complex set of factors on the demand and supply side,recommendations include macro-level institutional reforms and changes to local service delivery for inclusion of vulnerable groups, mobilization and capacity support, strategies for local employment generation, and monitoring and accountability support.

Disadvantaged Groups --- Early Retirement --- Employment --- Employment Rates --- Employment Services --- Gender --- Governance --- Health Insurance --- Household Surveys --- Human Capital --- Human Resources --- Improving Labor Markets --- Income Distribution --- Job Creation --- Labor Market --- Labor Markets --- Labor Policy --- Management --- National Governance --- Older Workers --- On-the-Job Training --- Participation and Civic Engagement --- Private Sector --- Retirement --- Social Dev/Gender/Inclusion --- Social Development --- Social Inclusion & Institutions --- Social Protection and Risk Management --- Social Protections and Labor --- Unemployment --- Volunteers --- Workers

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The auxilio emergencial (AE) was the main social policy in response to the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis in Brazil, and one of the most vigorous in the world, both in terms of its generosity, speed, and coverage, as well as because of the program's auspicious design. The AE payment system combined Caixa's historical experience, responsible for operating the payment of social transfers such as Bolsa Familia, with innovative solutions. These allowed the use of a 100 percent digital means of payment and with an incentive to save, which contributed to the largest collection of savings in the Brazilian historical series. AE utilized three entry channels: (a) automatic selection of Programa Bolsa Familia (PBF) beneficiaries who will be eligible to receive more significant benefits through the AE program; (b) the automatic selection of people registered in the largest administrative registry of Brazilian social programs but who were not beneficiaries of the PBF; (c) passive selection based on requests submitted through the app developed by CAIXA for this purpose, which led to the creation of a new temporary registry (the ExtraCad). The AE was created to be a temporary program, with an expected duration of only three months. However, the benefit was reissued in 3 versions (each with its legal diploma) which share the same operational structure, although they maintain significant differences in their rules and procedures.

Finance and Development --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Poverty Reduction --- Savings --- Services and Transfers To Poor --- Social Protections and Assistance --- Social Protections and Labor

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With the advent of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), Brazil has come out with one of the fastest and most generous social protection responses globally. Auxilio Emergencial (AE's) operation is in contrast to that of regular social protection programs due to its highly centralized setup with limited formal involvement of subnational governments. Therefore, this analysis aims at understanding some core reasons why this happened and what were the main implications of this centralized operation to the program. The text also describes measures that were enacted to mitigate challenges due to the exclusion of subnational governments from the operation of AE and discusses the extent to which these can integrate traditional decentralization mechanisms of regular programs in the future and further improve the sectoral case management capacity at large. This paper is structured in seven chapters. Chapter one is introduction, chapter two presents a conceptual framework describing main forms of decentralization and discussing their adequacy to different contexts and traditional functions of the social protection sector. Chapter three presents an overview of AE highlighting its centralized setup and already discussing some main reasons why traditional decentralization mechanisms, such as the unified social assistance system (SUAS), were not formal members of the program. Chapter four discusses legacies of SUAS historical support to social protection in Brazil and how these have contributed to AE even if the system was not formally involved in the program. Chapter five describes some main challenges faced by AE and that can arguably have been mitigated had SUAS and or other subnational governments been part of its formal operation. Chapter six considers how SUAS and decentralized forms of social protection were nevertheless relevant as complementary measures to that provided by AE. Finally, chapter seven concludes by summarizing some core lessons learned for engaging decentralized mechanisms in emergency responses in the future.

Coronavirus --- COVID-19 --- Disease Control and Prevention --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Poverty Reduction --- Public Sector Development --- Services and Transfers To Poor --- Social Protections and Assistance --- Social Protections and Labor