The Evolution of Social Registries in Latin America and the Caribbean

An educational video from Colombia’s government introduces a playful pink character with an undefined, asymmetrical, squarish body shape. Some squares appear to float around its head, suggesting it is an agglomeration of squares. The character introduces itself as “SISBEN”: it’s Colombia’s social registry.

The hard-to-define shape of the SISBEN character might be a good illustration of why social registries are commonly misunderstood in Latin America and the Caribbean. Social registries have often been strictly discussed by data experts with limited diffusion to ordinary people on the actual role they may play in their lives.

Social registries are information systems that consolidate data about families’ living conditions and income — the squares of the pink character. These systems capture essential details such as household composition, education levels, employment status, housing quality, and access to water. Depending on the country, governments collect this information using surveys, citizens’ physical or digital windows, other administrative data, or a combination of them. Beyond compiling data, social registries serve as inclusion systems, providing a “gateway” for individuals and families to be considered for inclusion in one or more social programs —such as cash transfers, school feeding initiatives, or health subsidies— based on an assessment of their needs and conditions.

In a region where a quarter of people are poor and a third are vulnerable, having clear rules for targeting social benefits and services is vital for ensuring that assistance reaches those who need it most, maintaining fairness and transparency, optimizing resource use, and enabling effective monitoring and evaluation of social programs.

Social registries were born and have evolved in different times and shapes in Latin America and the Caribbean, from 1976 in Chile to 2021 in Paraguay, with most emerging in the 2000s and 2010s. A new World Bank technical note explore their mixed natures and evolution.

Four main recent evolutions stand out:

1. Larger Coverage: Social registries now cover larger shares of the population. While in past decades, registries typically covered one or two-thirds of the population, various countries reached over 80 percent following the COVID crisis, including Chile, Costa Rica, and Colombia, which reached 100 percent (Figure 1). Larger coverage is useful to map the needs of a broader population, for instance, the vulnerable (those not poor but at risk of falling back into it). Not all countries may choose this path, though. Larger coverage may not be feasible or desirable for very large countries like Brazil. However, small countries with incipient registries, like those of most Central America and Caribbean countries (that currently cover less than 20% of their populations) could work on expanding coverage making sure that the poor and vulnerable are part of the registries.

Figure 1. Population coverage of social registries across countries, 2024

_{Source: World Bank} 

2. Improved Interoperability: Social registries have become increasingly connected and their information cross-checked with other administrative databases from central and local governments (Figure 2). This can transform the design and provision of social programs since, thanks to these interconnected databases, social workers and policymakers can inquire about the characteristics of households and assess which benefits are more relevant for a specific household. For example, Chile’s Gestion Social Local program, supported by the World Bank, has contributed to improving municipalities’ management of social programs, making it less burdensome, less fragmented, and more responsive to the needs and specific features of vulnerable households.

Figure 2. Social registries levels of interoperability across countries, 2024

_{Source: World Bank} 

3. Advanced Monitoring and Planning: Advanced social registries can now be used to monitor and plan social policy and promote rapid response to shocks and emergencies. With access to larger information on household characteristics and the benefits they receive, authorities can go beyond the use of registries as targeting tools and use them to monitor spending on social programs, identify complementarity between interventions, and plan future policies. Advanced registries can also assess vulnerability to natural disasters to anticipate response to emergencies or act quickly after one. For example, SIUBEN, the Dominican Republic’s registry, includes an index of households’ probability of being affected by climate events such as hurricanes, storms, and floods, which can be turned into maps showing levels of vulnerability.

4. Increased Responsibility: More and better data implies more responsibilities to protect personal information and build trust with citizens. While more advanced registries rely less on data collected at the household level and more on administrative data, there is still a need to ensure citizens’ consent for data sharing. Governments must foster understanding and trust from households to avoid fallacies around social registries, create a culture of trust, and facilitate citizens’ understanding of the information that the state has about them.

How should registries further evolve? Ideally, incipient registries would cover more people, especially the vulnerable. Established government bodies managing registries would become stronger with clear and robust governance structures, stable budgets. Finally, highly trained staff would use data efficiently and ethically and to communicate clearly to citizens the now wide roles of registries.

The playful pink characters introduced at the start of this blog have evolved into stronger, taller, and more knowledgeable beings. With their newfound powers, they can aim to drive a more customer-centric delivery of social programs and contribute to reducing poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean.