Writers: Stephen Kidd, Diloá Athias
In March 2025, the authors published a critique of the ILO’s estimates of the cost of covering the financing gap for universal social security across low- and middle-income countries, which had been set out in a paper by Cattaneo et al (2024) and repeated in the World Social Protection Report 2024-26.
In April 2025, the ILO responded to the authors’ critique, defending their methodology and expressing full confidence in their results.
This paper highlights issues with the ILO’s justification of its methodology. We maintain that the ILO’s estimate that it would cost 19.8 per cent of cumulative GDP to finance the coverage gap in low-income countries is incorrect and that the true cost would be much lower. The paper further describes how the ILO’s methodology has resulted in unreliable results not only across low-income countries, but middle-income countries also. Consequently, the ILO’s estimate that it would cost only 1.3 per cent of cumulative GDP to fill the coverage gap across all low- and middle income countries is, therefore, also flawed (but this time the cost is too low). The authors continue to advise against using the results from Cattaneo et al (2024), including in the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4).
To read the full research paper: Click here
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