 People who are about to build a bridge need to know how to build it, which type of materials, how long to make it, how high to make it, and who would then use it and where it would take people from and to. And tax benefit micro-simulation is doing exactly that, but with social security policies rather than bricks and mortar. How does the government know what policies will work and how can a government know who will benefit from a change in tax and benefit policy? And by how much? Governments the world over need a model to understand and estimate the effect of a small change in policy on people's lives. Many high income countries have what are called micro-simulation models. These are like a flight simulator for the economy's tax and benefit system. Eremod is a micro-simulation model that has been running in the EU for more than 20 years. Up until recently, in many of the world's poorest countries, there has been no such model. As a country, we don't know how much it would cost to roll out, for instance, an expanded social protection system. We don't know also which are the best options to implement. So on the basis of this model, we're able to simulate and be able to understand what are the likely options and what would it cost government to implement such measures. EU and EUIDER, together with local partners, have set up a project, SouthMod, to bring micro-simulation modeling to many countries of the global south, including Mozambique. Micro-simulations look at data on nationally representative households. They allow economists to get a sense of how many people are in each household, the household's income, the taxes they pay, and other spending. Economists can then see what effect a change in policy, for example child benefit, might have on household income and poverty levels. As the data are nationally representative, one can then add up across all households and see how a policy affects household budgets and the overall government budget. In other words, economists can get a sense of how much it will cost and whether it will work. The beauty is that in using this model, it doesn't take months or years and very complex and costly evaluations. The same day, you can test out a number of different options for using your money and measure the impact that the different policy options would have. In July 2017, research and policymaker teams from seven developing countries at Inmaputu to learn how to build these kinds of models. The approach is collaboration between international micro-simulation experts and then local researchers. The international experts, they know their model, but they don't know the country's circumstances. We have just approved a national strategy for social protection where child protection is extremely important and therefore politicians and the Mozmod model will be extremely important to help them taking the decisions. The Mozambican model, Mozmod, is being used to see the effect of introducing universal child benefits and other social security measures to help deal with the challenges of a population where almost half are under the age of 15. We can join our macroeconomic policy on taxation to know how we can allocate the additional resources we have to promote social protection. Micro-simulation modelling can help governments understand how taxes and benefits affect various aspects of the economy from children and child benefit to older people and pensions. Many of the sustainable development goals require policies that micro-simulation modelling can help to identify and simulate. The Ministry of Finance as well as the Ministry of National Development Planning have indicated their interest in this and so when you have an opportunity to come together you see how the others have dealt with it. You take away from that and you go and implement. You don't have to waste time to start all over because someone has already done something. Once the government and researchers can model the initial effects of policy the next step is for researchers to start asking questions about how these policies affect behaviour. That way policy makers can understand not only the initial effects but also the knock-on effects of their policies. Now we are training expertise in how to use the MOSMOD tool to look at the effects of policies in poverty. SouthMOD is a big step to better understanding the economy and achieving better policies for many millions of people.