"The purpose of this paper is to summarize the presence and importance of Unemployment Compensation in the world today. Summary measures are developed

built-up from country-specific detail, and aggregated for the major regions of the world. The paper also summarizes key details about the measurement of unemployment in labor force surveys. After all, it is the volume of unemployment that is crucial in assessing the performance of UC programs: how capable is a country's UC program in providing short term protection to its citizens against the loss of earnings and income due to unemployment?

The paper reaches three main conclusions. First, unemployment rates vary widely across major geographic regions; for instance, low unemployment is a notable feature of Asian economies. Second, nearly half of the world's population (47 percent) resides in countries where UC programs are not available. Third, even where UC is present, the number of beneficiaries relative to total unemployment is often very low. In the countries where recipiency could be assessed for this paper, UC recipients averaged less than one person in five among the unemployed. The combined effects of not having UC programs and low recipiency in many countries with UC means that most of the world's unemployed are effectively beyond the reach of these programs. This implies widespread reliance upon coping mechanisms by affected individuals as well as added financial burdens for the other social programs that serve the unemployed."

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