Case Study

Abstract

This chapter provides a case study of the most common and particularly successful cash transfer programme, ‘social’ (non-contributory) pensions, based on a unique database that covers all social pensions in all countries of the global South, with differentiated variables. The chapter charts the massive spread of social pensions since the 1990s, and investigates if and how social pensions have created social citizenship rights for older persons. While ‘universal’ (non-means-tested) social pensions are often seen as embodying social citizenship rights, in this chapter a more complex social citizenship index is constructed. Using this index, a fuzzy set analysis reveals that the contribution of social pensions to social citizenship cuts across the distinction ‘universal’ vs. means-tested. Moreover, social pensions are located in the overall arrangement of old-age security in a country, giving rise to four models of social citizenship in old age.