WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

 

WIEGO - Women in Informal Employment Globalizing & Organizing

 

THE INFORMAL ECONOMY - WIEGO

 

Direct Link to Full 26-Page 2012 Document:

http://wiego.org/sites/wiego.org/files/publications/files/Chen_WIEGO_WP1.pdf

 

Page 9 of Report gives diagram of WIEGO Model of Informal Employment: Hierarchy of Earnings & Poverty Risk by Employment Status and Sex.

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WOMEN & THE INFORMAL ECONOMY

AusAid - Australia

http://www.ode.ausaid.gov.au/current_work/documents/women-informal-economy-lota-bertulfo.pdf

By Lota Bertulfo - 13 Pages

Women dominate the informal economy. Within informal employment, their wages are lower than men’s. The types of informal work women do as market or street vendors, hawkers or homeworkers, expose them to risks to their physical safety and health. The provision of social protection, including health insurance, pensions, and maternity benefits, improving occupational safety and reducing work hazards, improving access to child care, and building informal workers’ organizations, alliances and networks are some of the ways that can be undertaken to improve the conditions of informal workers, especially women. Improving the conditions of informal workers therefore will have to take a gendered approach.

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ILO - International Labour Organization

MICROINSURANCE LEVERAGE TO PROMOTE UNIVERSAL HEALTH COVERAGE - THE INFORMAL ECONOMY - WOMEN

 

Direct Link to Full 101-Page Publication:

http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/mifacility/download/mpaper23.pdf

 

Reaching low-income households in the informal economy

The informal economy is varied, comprising workers with a range of incomes, both poor and non-poor. Informal workers are employed in diverse areas such as farming, textiles and domestic work, but lack formal employment contracts or other means needed for enrolling in and contributing premiums to social insurance schemes. This challenge can be exacerbated by other characteristics of informal employment, which include: 

· Identification: Informal workers may lack a formal identity registration and may not belong to any professional association or organized group.

· Premium collection: Individual contributions cannot be automatically deducted from payroll and the administrative cost of collecting them may even exceed the revenue collected. Incomes may fluctuate according to seasonal harvests or production cycles, as may spending (e.g. for weddings, festivals or education). Even if a family can afford insurance, the timing of premium collection may not align with its cash flow.

· Willingness to pay: The value of insurance may not always be apparent to clients (Dror et al., 2012a; Mathauer et al., 2008). Even those who understand insurance concepts may not purchase it due to behavioural factors (Dalal et al., 2010). They may think that they will not fall sick again, or fear that by purchasing insurance they will be more likely to become ill (Matul et al., 2013).

· Distrust of government institutions and insurers: Trust can also be a challenge, with communities more willing to trust locally sponsored products sold by neighbours (Dalal et al., 2010).

· Product design: Health insurance products for informal workers need to reflect the demographics, health status, ability to pay and health-care delivery infrastructure of the target audience. Migration, which is common among informal workers, not only makes establishing their identity and location difficult, but means that products must be portable, so that workers can use them wherever they are.  

· Access: Insurance alone is insufficient. Informal workers and their families living in rural areas need access to quality health-care services, but may have limited choice. In order for HMI or any type of insurance to be successful, infrastructure and delivery of health-care services must be improved at the same time.

To overcome challenges in identifying eligible clients, HMI schemes often operate locally, either by linking with organized groups in the informal sector (for example, cooperatives and MFIs) or by conducting door-to-door enrolment. Hygeia Community Health Care (HCHC) in Nigeria, which places agents in markets throughout Lagos to conduct enrolment and premium collection where individuals work, and Uplift Mutuals in India, which offers health coverage to microfinance clients, illustrate how HMI can be anchored in the community (Hygeia Community Health Care, 2013; Uplift India Association, 2013). In other schemes, such as in Guinea‘s Union des Mutuelles de Santé de Guinée Forestière, the premium collection time is adapted to coincide with income availability (i.e. harvest time) (Centre International de Developpement et de Recherche (CIDR), 2012).

To create more tangible products, some HMI schemes provide value-added services, either for preventive or therapeutic care. Examples are Swayam Shikshan Prayog, an Indian NGO, which offers discounted access to outpatient consultations and medicines, and SAJIDA Foundation in Bangladesh, which offers access to a dial-a-doctor service (Pott et al., 2013).

Many HMI schemes also facilitate access to services with "cashless" systems that do not require out-of-pocket payment by clients; instead, the HMI scheme makes a payment on behalf of the client, directly to the health-care provider. The case of HCHC in Nigeria is also interesting, as all health facilities involved in the scheme must enrol in the SafeCare programme, which includes a step-wise approach to improve service quality.

Nevertheless, HMI schemes struggle to be viable. Some have strong community engagement, but suffer from weak managerial skills, or vice versa. They typically rely on voluntary contributions from households, with limited subsidies from the government, which constrains their ability to offer comprehensive benefit packages and contributes to adverse selection. While government subsidized schemes can be more affordable, they may provide low client satisfaction, due to limited access to facilities or concerns about quality.