The combined effects of globalisation, deregulation and automation have changed the employment relationships and patterns on which our social protection systems are built. These changes pose a number of challenges: on the one hand, precarious jobs and contracts may interrupt and/or reduce both worker and employer contributions to social security and taxation systems, while they also simultaneously generate an increased need for income support, for instance during periods of unemployment or at retirement age.
Do these developments undermine established social contracts? Are governments indirectly subsidising poor-quality employment through income support systems and other welfare state payments? Do these mechanisms contribute to entrenching inequalities?
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Naila Kabeer (@N_Kabeer) is Professor of Gender and Development at LSE. Naila is also a Faculty Associate at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute and on the governing board of the Atlantic Fellowship for Social and Economic Equity. She has done extensive advisory work with international agencies (World Bank, ADB, UNDP, UN Women), bilateral agencies (DFID, SIDA, CIDA, IDRC) and NGOs (Oxfam, Action Aid, BRAC, PRADAN and Nijera Kori).
Stephen Machin is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, has been President of the European Association of Labour Economists, is a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists and was an independent member of the Low Pay Commission from 2007-14. He is the Chair of Sub-Panel 16 Econometrics of the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021).
Kirsten Sehnbruch (@KirstenSehn) is a British Academy Global Professor and a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the International Inequalities Institute at LSE. Previously, she was the Director of the Institute for Public Policy at the Universidad Diego Portales (Chile), and a Lecturer at the University of California, at Berkeley. Her work informs social, labour and development policy more broadly as it allows for resources to be targeted at the most vulnerable workers in a labour market.
Chris Pissarides is Professor of Economics at LSE and holder of the Norman Sosnow Chair in Economics. He is also a fellow of the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE and of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. He specialises in the economics of unemployment, labour-market theory, labour-market policy and more recently he has written about growth and structural change. In 2010 he was jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
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The LSE School of Public Policy (@LSEPublicPolicy) equips you with the skills and ideas to transform people and societies. It is an international community where ideas and practice meet. Their approach creates professionals with the ability to analyse, understand and resolve the challenges of contemporary governance.
Beveridge 2.0 Redefining the Social Contract is an initiative that brings the LSE community together with the intent of exploring avenues for collaborative cross-disciplinary research.
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