Social Protection for All: The Next Step for the Malaysian Welfare

Abstract

This report aims to support policymakers, program designers, and evaluators to develop a comprehensive social protection mechanism. The past decade has seen a marked spike in policy momentum around the importance of social protection policies and programs yet there has been very little attention to social protection’s role in tackling experiences of poverty and vulnerability. Social protection is recognized as a key policy tool to help achieve the Malaysia Development Goals; as a policy approach underpinned by rigorous evaluation evidence; as a critical mechanism to cushion the poor and newly poor from the worst effects of the global recession; and as a core human right. At the same time, the 2010s have seen a renewed interest in the role that addressing gender inequalities can play in achieving broader development objectives. The post-2015 Malaysia development agenda requires a new approach to national development, taking the multiple interlinked domestic and global challenges that exist even more into account. It is therefore of paramount importance that, in view of the multiple roles that social protection can play in social and economic development, the post-2015 Malaysia development agenda will acknowledge the critical role extending adequate social protection plays in furthering key outcomes, ensuring the inclusion of all groups in development and society as a means to combat inequality, vulnerability, and poverty. The post-2015 debate needs a renewed and comprehensive focus on poverty, inequality, income distribution, and social inclusion. Fiscally sustainable social protection programs based on strong legal and regulatory frameworks should be an integral component of national development strategies to achieve inclusive, equitable sustainable development. In setting out its point of departure for the study of poverty reduction, the Proposal makes the following significant observations: • It is crucial to develop a coherent and consistent framework for connecting discussions of poverty and its reduction to strategic links among different dimensions of development, including governance, economic growth, stabilization, and security. • Policy recommendations should draw substantially from the ideas, theories, and experiences available from more successful records of poverty reduction, notably those attained by the Nordic late industrializers and the East Asian developmental states. • It is necessary to go beyond measuring things that people lack without understanding why by investigating such aspects of poverty as self-reinforcing vertical and horizontal inequalities, and the impact of orthodox macroeconomic policies and the disproportionate tendencies of market forces on these inequalities. • Equity being an integral component of poverty reduction, it is necessary not to isolate social policy from economic policy, but to analyze the macroeconomic policy and growth strategy that should be pursued in tandem with ‘poverty alleviation’ social policy. • The notion of participation in current poverty reduction strategies, stresses process rather than substance. By restricting the agenda of participation to empowerment at the micro-level without tackling dis-empowerment or exclusion at the macro level, the notion ignores the dilemma that poverty is lived at the micro level but its reproduction, intensification or amelioration depend crucially on macro-level policies.