Income security is about the level of income (absolute and relative to needs), assurance of receipt, expectation of income adequacy now and improvement or deterioration in the future, both during a person?s working life and in old age or disability retirement. Income security is about actual, perceived and expected income.

A national Job Security Index must be calculated on the basis of more indirect proxy measures than the others, and focuses on access to relatively skilled jobs and measures to combat discrimination in job opportunities.

Thus, a positive value is given if the country has ratified
- ILO Convention No. 102 on Social Security (Minimum Standards),
- ILO Conventions No. 26 and 131 on Minimum Wage Fixing and
- ILO Convention No. 95 on Protection of Wages.

The first covers the whole population in each country. They are:
- The national poverty rate, as a measure of the size of the population economically at risk;
- GDP per capita expressed on a purchasing power parity basis and
- the Gini coefficient measuring income distribution to evaluate wealth and its distribution, assuming the lower the level and the more unequal the distribution the more insecure;
- A measure of foreign indebtedness (external debt relative to gross national product) to reflect a country's vulnerability to a sudden loss of whatever level of national income security it has achieved (relevant for the sort of experience Argentineans endured in 2001-02);
- Life expectancy at birth, as a proxy for overall public and individual health status. Several health indicators were reviewed, including the infant mortality rate. While highly correlated with GDP per capita, health indicators vary considerably across developing countries.

Only a few non-European countries are Pacesetters and none of them is from Africa, North or South. Countries from this continent, together with most countries from Asia and Eastern Europe, do not provide adequate income security, and are either in the Much-to-be-Done or the Conventional clusters. Latin American countries are mainly Conventionals.

Comparing individual country scores on income security shows that the 14 most secure, the Pacesetters, are western European countries headed by Norway. Next are non-European OECD countries, such as Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and the more economically advanced eastern European countries, such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia and Poland.

Latin American, Caribbean and North African countries constitute the bulk of those providing 'middle range' income security. As Conventionals they have some formal policies and institutions that should promote income security but have economic realities that make the outcomes less than satisfactory.

The least secure countries are concentrated in South and East Asia, including the highly populated countries of China, India, Indonesia and Bangladesh, in Central Asia and the Caucasus, and in sub-Saharan Africa. Mauritius and South Africa are the exceptions, achieving relatively high levels of income security compared to their neighbours.