For the first time just over half of the world's population receives at least one social protection benefit, but 3.8 billion people still have none, and in low-income countries fewer than one in ten are covered.
Updated October 15, 2026. Written from the sources listed below, not independently peer-reviewed.
Out of every 100 children and adolescents worldwide (aged 0 to 18), how many receive a child or family cash benefit?
3.8 billion
People without any social protection benefit
47.6% of the world's population; 52.4% were covered by at least one cash benefit. ILO modelled estimate.
Data year 2023. Source: International Labour Organization, 2024
23.9%
Children receiving a child or family benefit
Children aged 0 to 18 worldwide; 1.8 billion children are not covered. ILO modelled estimate.
Data year 2023. Source: International Labour Organization, 2024
9.7%
Population covered in low-income countries
Share covered by at least one benefit, hardly higher than in 2015. Low-income countries spend 0.8% of GDP on social protection (excluding health).
Data year 2023. Source: International Labour Organization, 2024
ILO modelled estimates for SDG indicator 1.3.1 (cash benefits or active contributions to a social security scheme). Only the two values reported in the World Social Protection Report 2024–26 are shown.
Target 1.3 calls for social protection for all, including floors, and substantial coverage of the poor and vulnerable by 2030. Coverage grew by about 10 percentage points between 2015 and 2023, but the ILO estimates that at this pace it would take another 49 years, until 2073, for everyone to be covered by at least one benefit, and coverage in low-income countries has hardly moved since 2015.
Only 16.7% of unemployed people worldwide received an unemployment cash benefit in 2023, compared with 79.6% of people above retirement age who received a pension.
Source: International Labour Organization, 202436.4% of women with newborns received a cash maternity benefit and 38.9% of people with severe disabilities received a disability benefit, leaving 85 million new mothers and 146 million people with severe disabilities without one.
Source: International Labour Organization, 2024In the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change, only 8.7% of people had any social protection in 2023, leaving 364 million people wholly unprotected.
Source: International Labour Organization, 2024In a sample of 27 low- and middle-income countries, women received on average 81 cents in social protection benefits for every dollar received by men.
Source: World Bank, 2025Each country is shaded by its latest available value, so you can see where the gap is widest. Hover or tap a country, search for one, or open the full table.
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100 minus the share of the population living in a household that takes part in at least one social assistance, social insurance or labour market programme, measured in household surveys (World Bank ASPIRE). Latest survey since 2015 per country, so years differ. Most high-income countries are not covered by these surveys and appear as 'No data'. This is a survey-based measure of participation and differs from the ILO's administrative estimate of people covered by at least one benefit (52.4% worldwide in 2023) used elsewhere on this page.
Source: World Bank ASPIRE (Atlas of Social Protection Indicators of Resilience and Equity), via World Bank Open Data. Latest year available per country; years differ.
Values load from World Bank Open Data. Simplified Natural Earth borders; they imply no position on disputed territories.
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Has the situation improved in the real world?
ModerateMore than half of the world's population now receives at least one benefit, up from 42.8% in 2015, and pension coverage has reached about four in five older people. But 3.8 billion people have no protection at all and coverage in low-income countries remains below 10%.
How mature and validated are the available solutions?
HighPensions, child benefits, unemployment insurance and cash transfers are long-established and well studied. A study of government cash transfer programmes in 37 low- and middle-income countries linked them to 20% lower mortality among women and 8% lower mortality among children under five.
How widely are effective solutions actually used?
LowNearly half of humanity is not covered, fewer than one in four children receive a child benefit, and only one in six unemployed people receive unemployment benefits. Where coverage exists in poor countries, benefits are often too small to make a real difference.
Global coverage rates rest on ILO modelled estimates built from administrative data that many countries report irregularly, and the World Bank's survey-based figures differ, for example on coverage in low-income countries. Data on whether benefits are adequate and reach people when shocks hit are thinner still.
Global coverage and the reach of tax-financed social assistance have risen steadily since 2015, and many countries expanded support quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In low-income and climate-vulnerable countries, however, coverage has barely changed and the financing gap is very large.
Social protection is the set of public benefits and insurance schemes that keep people from falling into poverty when they cannot earn enough: child and family benefits, maternity pay, sickness and unemployment benefits, disability benefits, pensions in old age, cover for injuries at work, health protection and cash or in-kind support for households in need. Without it, a birth, an illness, a lost job, a drought or simply growing old can push a family into debt, force children out of school or lead to cutting back on food and health care. The ILO estimates that in 2023, for the first time, more than half of the world's population (52.4%) was covered by at least one cash benefit, up from 42.8% in 2015, but 3.8 billion people were still entirely unprotected.
The gaps are deepest where need is greatest. In low-income countries only 9.7% of people were covered in 2023, barely more than in 2015, and in the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change the figure was 8.7%. Children, people who lose their jobs, mothers of newborns and people with severe disabilities are covered far less often than older people, who are the best-protected group. Where benefits exist, they are often too small to lift people out of poverty: the World Bank finds that in many low-income countries transfers are so low that they barely affect poverty rates.
SDG target 1.3 asks countries to put in place nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and to achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable by 2030. The main ways of measuring this are:
Coverage by at least one benefit (SDG 1.3.1)
The ILO counts the share of the population that either receives a cash benefit from at least one area of social protection or actively contributes to at least one social security scheme. Global and regional figures are ILO modelled estimates based on administrative data that countries report.
Coverage of specific groups
The same indicator is broken down by life situation: children receiving child or family benefits, mothers with newborns receiving maternity benefits, people with severe disabilities receiving disability benefits, unemployed people receiving unemployment benefits, workers protected against work injuries and people above retirement age receiving a pension.
Contributory and non-contributory schemes
Contributory schemes such as pension and unemployment insurance are financed by contributions from workers and employers. Non-contributory schemes, often called social assistance or safety nets, are financed from taxes and pay benefits to people or households in need, for example through cash transfers.
Adequacy, not just coverage
The World Bank's ASPIRE data measure from household surveys whether people actually take part in programmes and how much benefits add to their welfare. Because methods and country samples differ, World Bank and ILO coverage figures for the same group of countries do not match exactly.
What works
Regular cash payments for every child, or for most children, reduce child poverty directly and avoid the errors and stigma of narrow targeting. Many high-income countries pay them to all or most families with children.
Limits
They are costly for countries with many children and a small tax base: only 7.6% of children in low-income countries received a child or family cash benefit in 2023.
What works
Contributory pensions combined with basic non-contributory pensions have brought 79.6% of people above retirement age into coverage, the highest rate of any group, up 5.5 percentage points since 2015.
Limits
More than 165 million people above retirement age still receive no pension, and basic pensions in many countries are too low to cover essential needs.
What works
Tax-financed social assistance, often paid as regular cash transfers, has expanded fastest of all benefits and reached 37.3% of vulnerable people in 2023, 10.6 percentage points more than in 2015. Large government programmes have been linked to lower mortality among women and young children.
Limits
In many low-income countries transfers are so small that they barely affect poverty, and narrow targeting often misses eligible households.
What works
Simplified registration, subsidised contributions and flexible payment options can bring workers outside formal employment into pension, health, maternity and injury schemes, so that protection is shared between workers, employers and the state.
Limits
Only 37.4% of workers worldwide are protected if they are injured at work, and 2.3 billion workers have no such cover; irregular incomes make regular contributions hard for many informal workers.
What works
Programmes designed to scale up quickly when droughts, floods or economic crises hit can protect households before they sell assets or cut back. In the Sahel, beneficiaries of such programmes avoid a 24% drop in consumption during shocks and are 25% less likely to cut spending on health and education.
Limits
Scaling up requires up-to-date registries, pre-arranged financing and delivery systems that work in remote or conflict-affected areas, which many of the most exposed countries lack.
Promising, but not proven at scale. The stage shows how far each approach has come; it is not a recommendation.
Paying benefits into accounts or mobile wallets and linking programme registries with identity and household data helped emergency social protection responses reach 1.7 billion people in developing countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Questions remain about exclusion of people without phones or ID, data protection and keeping registries current.
Some governments and humanitarian agencies release cash when weather forecasts or early-warning indicators cross a set threshold, before a flood or drought peaks. Evidence on how much earlier payment improves outcomes is still limited to a small number of programmes.
Using revenue from carbon pricing or from reformed fuel subsidies to fund benefits could help households cope with climate shocks and the cost of the energy transition. The World Bank notes that global energy subsidies, which benefit richer households more, cost over four times the average spending on social assistance.
Combining regular transfers with coaching, savings groups, skills training or links to health and nutrition services aims to help households move beyond subsistence. Results are encouraging in several trials, but cost and how to run such packages at national scale are not yet settled.
Implementation gap
Low-income countries spend 0.8% of GDP on social protection excluding health, against 16.2% in high-income countries. Guaranteeing at least a basic floor would require an additional US$308.5 billion a year in low-income countries, equal to about half of their GDP.
Implementation gap
Even where people are covered, transfers in many low-income countries are so low that they barely change poverty rates; the adequacy of benefits in upper-middle-income countries is about three times that in low-income countries.
Coordination gap
Contributory schemes are built around formal employment, so most workers in the informal economy, including many women and self-employed people, are not reached and do not contribute.
Technology gap
Many countries lack up-to-date registries of households, reliable identification and payment systems that reach remote areas, which makes it hard to enrol people and to scale support quickly after a shock.
Coordination gap
Social protection in many low-income countries rests on many small, donor-funded and short-term projects rather than a national system with secure domestic funding, which makes coverage unstable and hard to expand.
Knowledge gap
Global coverage rates are modelled from incomplete administrative reports, and survey-based figures from the World Bank give different answers for the same countries, so it is difficult to track who is missed and whether benefits are enough to live on.
Unresolved questions, not vetted breakthroughs. Answering any of them would change what is possible.
The financing gaps for low-income countries are very large relative to their economies. It is open which mix of taxation, subsidy reform, contributions and international support can sustainably close them.
Narrowly targeted programmes concentrate money on the poorest but often miss many of them, while universal benefits are simpler but costlier. Which design reaches poor households best at a given budget, and in which settings, is still debated.
It is not yet clear which combinations of early-warning triggers, pre-arranged financing and registries allow programmes to scale up fast enough after droughts, floods or price spikes, especially in fragile and conflict-affected areas.
Researchers and governments are still testing how to design contributions and benefits for people with irregular incomes, several employers or no employer at all, without discouraging formal work.
Many people do not receive benefits they qualify for because of complex rules or missing documents. Volunteering with a local advice centre, or helping a relative or neighbour with applications, can make a direct difference.
If you employ a domestic worker, carer or other helper, register them and pay the required contributions so that they are covered for sickness, maternity, injury and old age.
Donate to or volunteer with established organisations that help households in poor or crisis-affected countries through cash support or that campaign for universal social protection, and look for evidence of what their programmes achieve.
Social protection depends on public budgets and laws. Informing yourself about how your country's benefits are financed, and raising the issue with elected representatives, helps keep it on the agenda.
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International Labour Organization, published 2024
The ILO's flagship report on social protection, published September 2024 with data for 2023. Source of the 52.4% global coverage (42.8% in 2015), 3.8 billion unprotected people, coverage by group, low-income and climate-vulnerable countries, spending, financing gaps and the 2073 projection.
United Nations Statistics Division, published 2026
Official UN progress report on SDG 1, repeating the ILO's 2023 estimates for indicator 1.3.1. Source of the split between contributory and non-contributory coverage and the 37.3% of vulnerable people covered by social assistance.
World Bank, published 2025
World Bank report based on ASPIRE household survey and administrative data for low- and middle-income countries. Source of the 2 billion inadequately covered people, the Sahel adaptive social protection results, COVID-19 emergency responses, the gender gap in benefits and energy subsidies.
World Bank, published 2025
Background paper to the State of Social Protection Report 2025. Source of benefit adequacy for the poorest fifth of households and the gap between low-income and upper-middle-income countries.
Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, University of Pennsylvania, published 2026
Summary of a peer-reviewed study (Richterman et al., Nature 618, 2023) using survey data from 37 low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2019 to estimate how government cash transfer programmes affected mortality.