ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2005

In association with Development Policy and Practice and the International Development Centre at the Open University

Milton Keynes, UK
7th-9th September 2005

Connecting people and places: challenges and opportunities for development

PARALLEL SESSION ON VULNERABILITY AND SOCIAL PROTECTION: CONCEPTS AND MEASURES
ABSTRACTS

Session F: September 9th, 10.15-11.45

TRANSFORMATIVE SOCIAL PROTECTION
R. Sabates-Wheeler and S. Devereux, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex

Social protection describes all public and private initiatives that provide income or consumption transfers to the poor, protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks, and enhance the social status and rights of the marginalised; with the overall objective of reducing the economic and social vulnerability of poor, vulnerable and marginalised groups. This paper argues against the popular perception of social protection as ‘social welfare programmes for poor countries’, consisting of costly targeted transfers to economically inactive or vulnerable groups. It also challenges the limited ambition of social protection policy in practice, which has moved little from its origins in the ‘social safety nets’ discourse of the 1980s, and aims to provide ‘economic protection’ against livelihood shocks, rather than ‘social protection’ as broadly defined here. Instead, we argue that social protection can be affordable; it should extend to all of the population; it can contribute to the Millennium Development Goal of poverty reduction; and it can empower marginalised people and be socially ‘transformative’.

DEVELOPING A SOCIAL PROTECTION INDEX FOR COMMITTED POVERTY REDUCTION IN ASIA
Bob Baulch, Institute of Development Studies; Joe Wood, Halcrow; and Axel Weber, ADB

Social protection is increasingly seen as an important tool for poverty reduction but to date there have been few quantitative cross-country assessments of social protection provision. This paper develops a social protection index that systematically and consistently quantifies social protection activities at the national level. The index comprises four summary indicators representing the cost, coverage, poverty targeting and impact of a country’s social protection activities, which are then scaled and weighted to produce an additive index of the overall level of social protection provision. The index is calculated for six, very different Asian countries (Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan and Vietnam) and reveals considerable contrasts between their levels of social protection provision.

PROTECTING WORKERS IN GLOBAL FOOD CHAINS
Stephanie Ware Barrientos, Institute of Development Studies, and Armando Barrientos, IDPM, University of Manchester

This paper traces the increased vulnerability of informal female workers in developing countries arising out of the integration of global value chains, and considers the costs of this vulnerability for their well being and human development. Commercialisation of the food system is rapidly advancing through supermarket retailing across all regions, including Europe, Latin America and Africa. This process is leading to a transformation of global agriculture, as supermarket buyers govern the food chain from production through distribution and consumption. This has also produced an expansion of informal wage labour, largely female, employed by commercial farms. The vulnerability of this group of workers reflects large social protection deficits. The paper draws on empirical evidence from vulnerable workers in South Africa and Chile to analyse the challenges involved in providing social protection for these workers.

CONCEPTUALISING ACTIONS TO ADDRESS RISK AND VULNERABILITY BY DONORS: DIFFERENCES AND COMMONALITIES
Rachel Sabates-Wheeler and Laurence Haddad, Institute of Development Studies

The paper provides an overview of areas of agreement and points of difference in donors’ conceptualisations of risk and vulnerability, essential to understanding their approach to, and interventions in, social protection. An effort is made to map the full range of interventions for risk and vulnerability, distinguishing between public and private intervention, short-term safety nets and longer-term basic social security agendas. The paper illustrates the constituent parts of the World Bank’s Social Risk Management framework in relation to other social protection agendas. The paper concludes by highlighting obvious empirical and analytical gaps that continue plague analyses of risk, vulnerability and social protection.