Social Protection Reforms Research Articles

Food vouchers and dietary diversity: evidence from social protection reform in Indonesia

Food vouchers and dietary diversity: evidence from social protection reform in Indonesia

Impact of Equity in Social Protection Spending on Income Poverty and Inequality

This study aims to investigate whether higher equity in government social protection spending strongly predicts positive changes in income poverty and inequality. Our approach was to regress the measures of absolute poverty and inequality on the indicators of equity in social protection spending at the country level, controlling for the level of spending and the country wealth measured by per capita GDP. For that purpose, we have compiled a dataset of 535 observations from 101 countries over years 1998–2017, including 199 observations for 70 low- and middle-income countries from Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa. Our findings support the proposition that equity in social spending (measured by the share of social protection spending going to the bottom quintile) is a significant and strong predictor of improved distributional outcomes (poverty measured at Int$1.90 a day and inequality measured by the Gini index). Moreover, in low- and middle-income countries in our sample the poverty and inequality reducing impact of this equity measure is stronger than in the sample including all countries. The presence of a significant gap in equity of social protection spending between the high-income countries and the rest of countries included in the study signifies that there is a large potential in improving equity in social protection spending in low- and middle-income countries. Social protection reforms in these countries should be focused on extending the coverage of social protection programs and improving access to social protection for the poorest segments of the population.

Social protection reform in Morocco in the aftermath of COVID-19.

Social protection reform in Morocco in the aftermath of COVID-19.

Transformation of Out-of-Home Services for Children in North Macedonia: Towards Individualized and Child Tailored Care

Abstract Republic of North Macedonia in the last several years undergoes comprehensive social protection reform. The reform processes have been focused on furthering the processes of deinstitutionalization, decentralization and pluralization of social services delivery. The transformation of social protection institutions has been one of the key priorities in this period, specifically out-of-family services for children. In this respect, alternative care services for children without parents and parental care has been strengthened and promoted. Foster care as a traditional form of protection has been given particular attention and has undergone considerable changes. This article will review key reform processes in the domain of social protection in the country, with focus on social services for children without parents and parental care. To do this, results from recent empirical research will be presented. Mixed methodology research findings target current conditions in respect to foster care, small group homes and supported living as services used for placement of children without parents and parental care as well as professional approaches used to provide for individualized and child-tailored care. Cross-cutting issues relate to human rights, basic human needs and social integration of children.

Social protection and inequality in the global South: Politics, actors and institutions

In this themed section, we explore the links between contemporary social protection approaches and inequality in developing countries, focusing on political economy drivers and the role of actors and institutions in recent reform and implementation processes. This introduction article establishes some common ground by introducing context, concepts and questions. Reducing inequality is identified as a key condition for achieving inclusive and sustainable development as aspired in the Sustainable Development Goals governments committed to in 2015. The introduction situates the three articles in this issue, two studies of pro-poor cash transfers in the Philippines and Kenya, and an analysis of the new national minimum wage policy in South Africa, in a context of contested globalisation, increasing inequality and the social turn, a come-back of social policy as a key development instrument. After identifying the limitations and opportunities of this social turn, the article discusses the three social protection reforms and their impact on equality and social change in the different country contexts through a lens of contestation, institutions and transformative change.

Different pathways of social protection reforms: An analysis of long-term institutional change in Kenya

• Theoretically, diversity in institutional change is explained by the interplay between preferences, institutions and uncertainty. • In Kenya, cash transfer reforms show a pattern of cumulative incremental change, change in social health protection is obstructed. • Contributing factors are stronger conflicting interests and institutional legacies within the area of social health insurance. • Private information and the presence of focal points facilitated decision-making on cash transfers and fee waivers. • Ambiguity and complexity sharpened the focus on cash transfers and exacerbated critical views on social health insurance. The potential of social protection to contribute to inclusive growth has been increasingly recognized throughout the last two decades. Social protection reforms involve comprehensive processes of long-term institutional change. Dynamics differ not only across but also within countries across social protection pillars reflecting multiple institutional trajectories and equilibria ranging from rapid and comprehensive shifts over processes of gradual change to situations of blocked reforms or reform reversals. This paper seeks to understand why reforms aiming at extending social protection coverage to the poor might differ across different pillars of social protection within the same country. Being embedded within comparative institutional analysis the paper aims at providing a systematic framework for defining and explaining variations in reform dynamics highlighting the role of uncertainty. The framework is applied to the Kenyan case. The empirical methodology employs a process tracing approach including primary and secondary data covering the time period between 2001 and 2017. The case of Kenya is one example for multiple institutional trajectories within a country: Whereas cash transfer reforms follow a pattern of cumulative incremental change, social health protection reforms reflect patterns of non-cumulative change including blocked reforms and reform reversals. The results suggest that those differences are partly explained by differences in preferences among agents or the institutional legacies within each domain. In addition, behavioral responses to uncertainty matter: Stronger information asymmetries within the cash transfer and fee waiver reform domains opened space for discretionary decision-making. Interpretations of the concept of social protection and complexity of 'insurance' facilitated processes related to cash transfers whereas providing impediments to social health insurance. Lastly, the international and socio-economic context provided focal points facilitating coordination on targeted or vertical interventions such as cash transfers or fee waivers.

Social Security Issues: Reflecting on Assam’s Concerens during the COVID-19 Pandemic

More than emergency measures, COVID-19 pandemic has shown that there is need for long-term social protection reforms. Basic social protection measures like health care, unemployment support, guaranteed minimum incomes, paid leave, childcare support, and pensions help to mitigate risks for individuals and households across the life cycle. With halt to economic activities poverty and deprivation will escalate. The spurt in violence and abuse, stress and anxiety arising out of income loss, social distancing indicates that psycho-social well being of both men and women during any distressed situation needs serious attention or else strategies to mitigate one disaster/pandemic situation may lead to other distresses. In mitigating current distress, vulnerability of women cannot be ignored as economic sluggishness is bound to be protracted and exacerbate.(This paper was presented at the National Webinar on 16.06.2020 on the theme ‘COVID-19 and Assam: Challenges to the Economy and Social Security by the SSRC, India.

Universal social protection in Tunisia: Comparing the effectiveness and cost‐efficiency of food and energy subsidies with a proposed universal child allowance programme

AbstractThis article compares the effectiveness and efficiency of a food and energy subsidy programme, which is currently implemented by the Tunisian government, and a universal child allowance programme that is discussed as an alternative to these subsidies. The empirical analysis is based on microsimulations on the poverty impact and the costs of both programmes based on Tunisian household survey data. Our results suggest that a universal child allowance is approximately twice as efficient (i.e. the cost of lifting one person out of poverty under a universal child allowance is half of the cost of lifting one person out of poverty using subsidies) in reducing poverty than the current food and energy subsidies. The article concludes that efficiency‐enhancing social protection reforms are possible based on a universal approach. Such reforms can be achieved without resorting to narrow poverty‐targeting as an alternative to the subsidies whose negative side‐effects (e.g. non‐negligible exclusion errors, incentives to informality and social tensions) and costs (both public and private costs related to intensive data collection to improve targeting) are usually overlooked or underestimated.

Fiscal space for health in HondurasEspaço fiscal para saúde em Honduras

RESUMENObjetivoAnalizar las fuentes de espacio fiscal para el sector salud en Honduras en un contexto de reforma del sector, con el compromiso de alcanzar una meta de gasto público en salud de 6% del producto interno bruto (PIB).MétodosSe realizó un análisis de la condición básica y las fuentes de espacio fiscal en base a una revisión bibliográfica y datos secundarios. Se estimó el tamaño de las fuentes con datos oficiales, estadísticas internacionales y estudios previos. De manera complementaria al estudio, se realizó un análisis de la factibilidad política y se aplicó una encuesta en línea a actores clave.ResultadosLas estimaciones de la condición básica de crecimiento económico muestran que es necesario identificar otras fuentes para poder generar nuevos recursos. La reciente reforma tributaria limita la factibilidad política de generar nuevos impuestos, a excepción de los impuestos al pecado cuya recaudación se podría asignar exclusivamente a salud. La reforma de protección social abre el camino para explorar medidas que liberen recursos con mejoras en la eficiencia del sector. Una limitante en el caso del gasto público proveniente de la seguridad social es el techo de la base contributiva, independiente de una aceleración en la formalización laboral.ConclusionesHonduras puede avanzar en lograr la meta de un gasto público en salud de 6% del PIB que respalde los planes de reforma sectorial, pero sus opciones se ven limitadas por la reciente reforma tributaria. La reforma de protección social en salud debe considerar los recursos adicionales que tendrá disponibles para no poner en riesgo su implementación.

The politics behind social protection in Nepal

This article is a qualitative case study on the political dimensions of social protection reforms in post-conflict Nepal. The article examines vertical versus horizontal party structures and the political economy of support for different parties, and how this relates to their social protection policies to help unpack gaps in the literature and provide a deeper understanding of both the constraints and opportunities for reform. Drawing on key informant interviews conducted in Nepal between 2012 and 2014, the article describes the attitudes of members of the main Nepalese political parties towards social protection, and analyses the proposals on social protection within party manifestos. It discusses the role of social protection in democratisation as well as limitations towards constructing a democratic welfare state grounded in the kind of clientelistic and patronage party politics that continue to dominate the political landscape in Nepal today. The article is relevant to those in the ‘thinking and working politically’ aid movement and those working towards social protection reforms in clientelist states.

Local community and ethical citizenship: Neoliberal configurations of social protection

This article explores the consequences of redefining citizenship as an ethical category during social protection reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Ethical citizenship refers to a particular way of defining the relationship between the state and a person; a special politics of behavior that seeks to redefine citizens as moral subjects of responsible communities. The article ethnographically demonstrates that a local community, imagined as a collective of ethical actors, was expected to take over a major portion of financing and organizing social protection. Translating neoliberal policies to BiH, under supervision of the international community, created an ambiguous environment without a «clear system or model» in which personal relationships gained a special relevance. The article argues that favors and informal practices, such as veze and stela, were not strategies people used to overcome problems of postsocialist markets and democracies. Veze and stela have become particularly important for the organization social protection because neoliberal reforms left undefined roles, responsibilities, and procedures of protection. The very need to personalize social protection was a constitutive element of contemporary, global, neoliberal ideas about the relationship between the state and society, while veza and stela enabled people to actively negotiate roles, responsibilities, and procedures of social protection within their local communities.

Εθνικές προτεραιότητες και ευρωπαϊκές προκλήσεις στη μεταρρύθμιση του συστήματος κοινωνικής προστασίας και απασχόλησης στην Ελλάδα, 1980-2004

<p>The reforms of social protection and employment policies that took place in Greece over the past three decades were dictated mainly by domestic priorities and needs. Contrary to international tendencies, social protection reforms in Greece obeyed mainly to the need for expansion of the welfare state in new areas, in order to fill the structural and historical social deficits. Policies and initiatives of European inspiration were succesfull only in so far as they pointed towards a direction of further strengthening of the welfare state</p>

Εθνικές προτεραιότητες και ευρωπαϊκές προκλήσεις στη μεταρρύθμιση του συστήματος κοινωνικής προστασίας και απασχόλησης στην Ελλάδα, 1980-2004

The reforms of social protection and employment policies that took place in Greece over the past three decades were dictated mainly by domestic priorities and needs. Contrary to international tendencies, social protection reforms in Greece obeyed mainly to the need for expansion of the welfare state in new areas, in order to fill the structural and historical social deficits. Policies and initiatives of European inspiration were succesfull only in so far as they pointed towards a direction of further strengthening of the welfare state

Structural adjustment and social protection in the Middle East and North Africa: food subsidies in Jordan

Jordan has been praised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) as a successful case of social protection reform. While implementing a structural adjustment programme (SAP), Jordan accepted the WB's policy assistance and successfully eliminated food subsidies, which the IMF/WB have repeatedly criticized for their inefficiency as a poverty alleviation programme. Nevertheless, even while officially suspending food subsidies, the Jordanian government still continued to fund them. Moreover, it officially reinstituted the subsidies in 2005. This fact demonstrates that the policy assistance is not powerful enough to change the food subsidy system, which is in-built in the social contract in Jordan.

The impact of social security reform on the labor market: The case of Colombia

This paper simulates the effects of three increasingly bolder reforms in the Colombian social protection system: the equalization of salaried and self-employed labor contributions; the removal of payroll taxes, parafiscales; and the complete delinking of social protection benefits from labor status. We collect nationally representative information concerning individual willingness to pay for several packages of social security benefits; identify and quantify – for the first time – three specific distortions caused by existing social security and social assistance systems; and simulate the gains that social protection reforms would bring about in terms of reduced labor distortions. We find that workers in Colombia, regardless of occupation, have a very similar willingness to pay for the full insurance package – below 20% of their labor earnings – and very similar valuation of social protection services – about 50% below par. Labor distortions are large, as expected from very high labor costs, but we quantify an implicit formality tax and informality subsidy ranging between 2 and 27 percent of different representative workers’ earnings. Critically, the long-discussed reforms in Colombia – including the elimination of parafiscales – will not reduce substantially the multiple distortions in its labor market.

Falling inequality in Latin America: policy changes and lessons

PART I: INEQUALITY CHANGES AND THE SURFACING OF NEW POLICY APPROACHES 1. Recent Distributive Changes in Latin America: An Overview 2. Inequality Trends and their Determinants: Latin America over 1990-2010 3. The Politics of Inequality and Redistribution in Latin America's Post-Adjustment Era PART II: RECENT INEQUALITY CHANGES IN SIX REPRESENTATIVE LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES 4. Redistribution without Structural Change in Ecuador: Rising and Falling Income Inequality in the 1990s and 2000s 5. Policy Regimes, Inequality, Poverty and Growth: The Chilean Experience, 1973-2010 6. Uruguay's Income Inequality and Political Regimes over 1981-2010 7. The Rise and Fall of Income Inequality in Mexico, 1989-2010 8. Social Policies or Private Solidarity? The Equalizing Role of Migration and Remittances in El Salvador 9. The Dynamics of Inequality Change in a Highly Dualistic Economy PART III: MAIN POLICY CHANGES AND INEQUALITY DURING THE LAST DECADE 10. Macroeconomic Policies, Growth, Employment, Poverty, and Inequality in Latin America 11. Trade and Income Distribution in Latin America: Is There Anything New to Say? 12. Changes in Labour Market Conditions and Policies and their Impact on Wage Inequality during the Last Decade 13. What Can Latin America Learn from China's Labour Market Reforms? 14. Tax Policy and Income Distribution during the Last Decade 15. Inequality in Education: Evidence for Latin America 16. On the Distributional Implications of Social Protection Reforms in Latin America

Outlier or Model of Austerity in Europe? The Case ofIrish Social Protection Reform

AbstractThis article analyses the evolution of theIrish economic crisis and its implications for social protection policy, specifically for working age adults, in the context ofEuropean integration andIreland's status as a small state member of theEU. We look at how neither small state characteristics, nor the position of small states in theEU, both of which raise problematic issues in their own right, are alone responsible forIreland's crisis situation. Such factors need to be understood in conjunction with national policy models and preferences which, in theIrish case, leant it something of an outlier status in theEU. Substantiating this argument and considering its implications for social protection reform, the article first examines the evolution ofIreland's liberal and increasingly financialized growth model in the context of greaterEuropean economic integration and how its risks intensified, but were also obscured, under Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Second, against this backdrop and despite the growingEUrole in social policy, it examines how national policy factors meant that focus on income transfers remained dominant in social protection developments during the growth period spanning the mid‐1990s to 2008. Third, it analyses the unprecedented degree of social protection retrenchment and reform occurring since the crisis, highlighting the congruence between national efforts and the impact of conditionalities associated with financial assistance. The article concludes by considering the question of to what extentIreland will remain an outlier post‐crisis given the direction theEUhas taken in dealing with the Eurozone crisis to date.

Economic Distress, Labor Market Reforms, and Dualism in Japan and Korea

This article seeks to examine the rapid rise of labor market dualism and inequality in Japan and Korea. It argues that the path‐dependent trajectories of labor market and social protection reforms biased in favor of labor market insiders explain recent institutional developments in the two countries. In Japan, political coalitions between conservative policymakers, large firms, and core regular workers in reform politics consolidated labor market dualism and inequality during its protracted recession. Meanwhile, the organizational capacity of large chaebol unions deepened the inequality and the segmentation of the dualistic labor market in Korea. By examining three key institutional domains of the labor market—labor market reform, wage bargaining, and social protection—this article analyzes the ways in which Japan and Korea have reinforced dualism and inequality over the past two decades.

Globalisation and Social Protection Reforms in Sri Lanka

In 2001, the Journal of International Business published a symposium titled ‘Multinationals: The Janus Face of Globalization’. In their introduction, the editors criticised international business s...

The Myth of the Frozen Welfare State and the Dynamics of Contemporary French and German Social-Protection Reform

This article explores the dynamics of French and German welfare-capitalist adjustment since the early 1990s. As opposed to the prevailing thesis that the French and German welfare states are politically and economically ‘frozen’, it contends that both countries have witnessed major political and policy adjustments changes during the past decade. In order to capture the dynamics of these changes, it suggests, we must extend our analysis beyond the welfare state, measured through social spending, to a broader notion of welfare capitalism, including social and labor-market policies and their linkages with the national political economy. The article develops this theoretical argument through a detailed analysis of recent reforms of French and German pensions and labor-market policies, two critical components of the two countries' welfare-capitalist systems.