The benefits of social protection
There is a growing body of evidence that social protection – such as small but regular transfers of cash, vouchers or food – can have huge benefits for poor people.
• Social protection reduces hunger and malnutrition, and enables poor and vulnerable people to better manage risk.
• It helps families to send their children to school.
• It enables women, children and older people to get access to health services, and helps people with AIDS to obtain treatment.
• It injects cash into local economies, creating demand for goods and services that stimulate small enterprises.
• Social protection interventions such as public works programmes, can help create jobs and build skills, as well as new roads and community structures and services.
Social protection can therefore have multiple benefits for poor women and men at all different stages of their lives.
Social protection has become even more important in the context of the recent food and financial crises.
It has been estimated that an additional 55 to 90 million people will be trapped in extreme poverty in 2009 due to the global downturn. Leaving school, going without food and essential medicines are just some of the ways in which poor families try to cope with financial hardship. Having flexible social protection systems in place can help to ensure that nations and their people avoid destructive coping strategies and are therefore better prepared to contribute to economic recovery, and to weather future shocks and crises.
How we help people through social protection programmes
Social protection has been critical in the development of all successful industrialised countries. Its has been an important aspect of the poverty reduction and state building agenda in many middle income countries such as Brazil and South Africa. Large scale national social protection programmes in middle income countries have been relatively cost effective, accounting for 0.4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006 in both Brazil and Mexico. Basic social transfer programmes can also be a realistic option for poor countries. Some low-income countries already have domestically financed programmes (e.g. Lesotho, Nepal, India). The costs of social protection measures can be kept relatively low and manageable by starting small and developing them over several years. But it’s helpful for countries to have an overall social protection strategy that can frame the different types of programmes and actions being implemented.
In terms of design and implementation choices, transfers can be:
• made universal for particular social groups (such as a pension for all older people)
• or can be targeted at the very poor (such as households with orphans and vulnerable children).
Communities can help identify those in need, or the providers of transfers can identify families directly. Local government and social welfare departments have a major role to play, but they often need more staff and money. And private organisations, like banks, can be highly effective at distributing transfers and at the same time help poor populations gain access to other kinds of financial services.
Civil society organisations can play a key role in raising awareness about the existence of different schemes, and in tracking fair allocation of resources. Social protection schemes are often linked with the provision of essential services. Countries such as Bangladesh, Nigeria and Indonesia have linked cash transfers for poor families to children using health and education services. In Nepal and Bangladesh, voucher schemes are helping women to get better access to maternal health services.
An example: Ethiopia’s effective use of social protection
In recent years, a number of poorer developing countries have shown that there are effective ways of providing social protection. Ethiopia is one example of the benefits of investment in social protection to get immediate help to people suffering from the impacts of crises such as drought. Under the government of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme people get money and food in exchange for work. Tasks focus on improving public facilities, such as roads, water points, and health and education posts. With the money received, participants can buy assets such as livestock, that may turn into lasting sources of income. By providing enough food to meet participants' needs, the programme makes them less likely to resort to desperate measures when famine threatens. In the past 5 years, the PSNP has reached seven and a half million rural poor people and made an important contribution to reducing hunger.
Ensuring access to social protection programmes now and in the future for the poorest people is one of the UK’s top development objectives.
DFID, in its 2009 White Paper, committed to help build social protection systems to get help to 50 million people in over 20 countries over the next three years (2009/10 to 2011/12). The UK is currently supporting social protection initiatives in over 30 countries and through multilateral instruments such as the World Bank’s Rapid Social Response Programme. We are working with governments in Kenya, Zambia, Rwanda and Pakistan to develop and expand new schemes and systems that respond to individual country circumstances and priorities.