Since 2001, the World Bank has supported the development of social registries in 34 countries, reaching approximately 713 million people worldwide. Social registries are digital platforms that collect and manage data on households and individuals to identify and support beneficiaries in accessing various social programs and services.
In Brazil, the Cadastro Único registry connects 94.5 million people to more than 60 federal programs as of September 2025. These include housing, utilities, and vocational training initiatives. The World Bank has provided technical assistance and lending operations to modernize Brazil’s social protection system. This modernization enabled digital payments and financial inclusion for millions of low-income families. The system also links beneficiaries to vocational training through programs like PRONTEC, helping them transition from social assistance into the labor market.
Rwanda’s Imibereho Social Registry now covers 13.8 million people with World Bank support. It serves as a national platform for safety nets, economic inclusion, skills development, and health insurance programs—reaching over 11 million beneficiaries through insurance alone. Rwanda has used data-driven approaches to retarget benefits and aims to increase efficiency in social protection spending by more than half.
In Lebanon, the DAEM Social Registry was developed with support from the Lebanon Emergency Social Safety Net Project (ESSN). Within two months of its launch, it registered half of Lebanon’s population. Since then, it has evolved from an emergency response tool into a central platform coordinating social assistance, economic inclusion efforts, primary healthcare access, and humanitarian programs.
The need for these systems arose because previously many citizens had to visit multiple government offices to access different services. This created confusion for families and increased costs for governments. Centralized registries reduce duplication and make it easier for people to access necessary support by allowing different databases to connect and share information in real time across sectors such as health, education, housing, and jobs.
"The World Bank has been supporting governments in designing and strengthening social registries as core elements of social protection delivery systems," according to the organization.
Social registries have expanded their roles beyond targeting for social protection—they now link households with employment pathways via connections to education, skills training, economic inclusion programs, utilities provision, health insurance coverage, and more.
The World Bank is working on developing flexible tools that help countries assess their delivery systems’ strengths and needs so they can scale up their registries as strategic investments not just for social protection but also as gateways toward broader economic opportunities.
Social registries are a key component of the World Bank Group’s SP500 corporate target: reaching 500 million people—half women—with social protection and labor programs by 2030. They also contribute toward delivering such programs specifically to an additional 250 million women globally by expanding connections between individuals and health care services, educational opportunities, job-skills initiatives, employment resources—and deploying transfers that cushion poor or vulnerable households during subsidy reforms.
Lessons learned from country experiences highlight that dynamic cross-sectoral public goods are more effective than static or program-specific targeting tools; this enables real-time updates while improving outreach among vulnerable groups through community-based engagement strategies such as Brazil’s Active Search program.
Looking ahead, the World Bank will continue its work supporting dynamic interoperable registry systems in countries including Bangladesh, Zambia, Kosovo among others—with an ongoing focus on crisis response integration, gender inclusivity measures and enhanced digital service delivery models globally.
"By integrating with public employment and labor programs," according to the press release,"registries can directly link social protection,s kills development,and employment opportunities—creating stronger pathways to jobs."