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Policy Paper on Social Protection

Author: A Shepherd and A Barrientos
Date: 2004
Size: 50 pages (298 KB)

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Summary

What is meant by social protection? This paper from the Overseas Development Institute answers this question, and discusses safety nets, social assistance and social insurance, and mutual and informal risk management. It argues that well designed social protection can have a positive impact on economic growth and can be affordable even in low-income countries.

Social protection is both an approach and a set of policies. As an approach it focuses on reducing risk and vulnerabilities and includes interventions from the public, private and voluntary sectors as well as informal networks. It is premised on achieving a degree of agreement across society that all citizens are entitled to certain minimum standards of welfare. Social protection is also a set of government policies to provide protection both to the ‘active poor’, and to the less active poor, with benefits for society as a whole. Such policies can help to fulfil states’ obligations to ensure basic rights for all individuals and are always part of a broader set of policies aimed at reducing risk and vulnerability and encouraging pro-poor growth.

Well designed social protection can have a positive rather than a restraining impact on economic growth and can help to shape the pattern of economic growth in favour of the poor.

• Social protection for the less active poor can be affordable even in low-income countries and has significant positive economic externalities.
• Recovery from shocks takes longer for the poor and there are usually benefits from external help, whether from public policy or private support.
• Informal protection is important and, where it is equitable in its burdens, should be facilitated.
• Vulnerability and risk vary within the life cycle and by gender: It is important that social protection policies and programmes recognise and address these variations.
• Countries develop unique social protection trajectories over time, reflecting the risk and vulnerability context and socio-political and economic history.

Combinations of social protection instruments are likely to be most effective. Social protection should be mainstreamed across government departments and integrated with other approaches to poverty reduction through key policy processes such as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.

• Targeting is often a less than ideal approach to providing protection. If it must exist, then the lightest targeting is best.
• Social protection can be supported financially through budget support or sector programming mechanisms, provided that there is the necessary agreement on objectives and instrumentation between donors and government.
• A sufficiently long time horizon for budget support must be developed to make it worthwhile a government embarking on particular social protection policies. Strong national ownership must be present from the start.
• Although start-up costs for social protection may be high, these can be spread over a number of years, and implementation can be progressive.
• The institutionalisation of social protection does not happen automatically, and key strategic decisions must be made. Political leadership is critical, but bureaucratic leadership and coordination are also important.
• Informal provision should always be explicitly considered, both to reduce the inequitable burdens this sometimes imposes and to facilitate the mutual protection which it gives to poor people.
• Mechanisms that strengthen the social networks on which mutuality depends can also be useful.

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Source: Shepherd, A., Marcus, R. and Barrientos, A., 2004, ‘Policy Paper on Social Protection’, paper produced for UK Department for International Development (DFID), final draft, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), London
Author: Overseas Development Institute (ODI), http://www.odi.org.uk/