Table 2 The steps of calculating annual costs of monthly MCT using the adjusted method for comparison

1

Determine the number of the population between 0 and 11 months as a proxy of women who could be exclusively breastfeeding their infant (Pop_p) per province.

Determine the number of women who work informally and gave birth in the prior year, given a vector of individual characteristics to form the number of WRA working in the informal sector in subgroups. Each subgroup presents the combination of WRA working in the informal sector based on several categories, namely aged (15–19, 20–24, 25–29, 30–34, 35–39, 40–44, 45–49), education (no education, primary education, junior high school, senior high school, diploma, and university), marital status (single, married, divorced, widow), locality (urban, rural), and gave birth in the last year (e.g. an example of a subgroup: the number of women working informally, aged 15–19, no education, single, live in urban area, gave birth in the last year).

2

Adjust the number of said population by parameters such as female labor force participation rate, share of women working in formal/informal sector, and the percentage of potential coverage of women who are eligible to receive paid maternity leave (Adj) to estimate the potential number of women who will receive paid maternity per province (Pop_p * Adj_y)

Calculate the percentage of WRA working informally who gave birth in the prior year per subgroup as a share of the total WRA working informally (i.e. the number of WRA working informally who gave birth in the last one year in a subgroup/the total number of WRA working informally) to estimate α, defined as the probability of WRA working informally who gave birth in the last year within each of the subgroup.

3

Set the length of leave (L) to three months. Multiply the potential number of women who will receive paid maternity per province by length of leave (Pop_p * Adj_y * L)

Determine the beneficiaries who may claim maternity leave in the informal sector in a given year by weighting the population of WRA employed in the informal sector by α. Pop_y or WRA data at the population level were obtained from available data and adjusted by the percentage of female labor participation rate and adjusted further by the percentage of WRA who work informally. Pop_y was then multiplied by α of the respective subgroups to determine the number of WRA who works informally and gave birth within the prior year (α * Pop_y)

4

Multiply the result from step three by the unit cost per province used to represent the value of cash transfer (UC_y), e.g. average minimum wage per province (Pop_p * Adj_y * L * UC_y)

Multiply the unit cost data (UC), e.g. average minimum wage, by results from step 3: (α * Pop_y * UC_CT)

5

Add the proxy of administration cost to the calculation: (Pop_p * Adj_y * L * UC_y) + AdmCy

Incremental coverage (IC) was determined based on regulations, recommendations, and literature regarding the length of leave and coverage. Multiply IC by step 4: (α * Pop_y * UC_CT * IC)

6

–

Add the proxy of administration cost to the calculation: (α * Pop_y * UC_CT * IC) + AdmCy