WUNRN
WIEGO - Women in Informal Employment
Globalizing & Organizing
THE INFORMAL ECONOMY - WIEGO
Direct Link to Full 26-Page 2012
Document:
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
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:
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.