Figure III-1 – Proportion of population covered by social protection, selected countries Papua New Guinea Pakistan Tonga Vanuatu Fiji Islands Bhutan Tuvalu Cambodia Nepal Lao PDR Maldives Bangladesh Marshall Islands Nauru Philippines India ASIA Malaysia Armenia Tajikistan China Indonesia Viet Nam Uzbekistan Sri Lanka Kazakhstan Azerbaijan Kyrgyzstan Cook Islands Mongolia Republic of Korea Japan 0
20
Source: Baulch et al, 2008
40
60
80
100
Overall Coverage (%)
– highest in East Asia including Japan, lowest in the Pacific (Figure III-2). This is reflected in a similar pattern of per capita expenditure (Figure III-3). These patterns largely correspond to differences in levels of development. And even if expenditures represent a small proportion of GDP they may take up a significant share of government budgets. Nevertheless, financing social protection expenditures in a progressive and sustainable framework has remained challenging and requires coordination on multiple fronts: greater efficiency in expenditure; improved domestic revenue mobilization; increased domestic borrowing; and increased multilateral and bilateral foreign borrowing and donor grants.
Across Asia and the Pacific, more than half of social protection expenditure is devoted to social insurance programmes – though the proportion varies from one sub-region to another. Coverage is higher in East and Central Asia, but lower in South Asia which makes greater use of microcredit and has yet to feel the demographic pressure of a rapidly ageing population. Interestingly, when it comes to programmes for the disabled, the elderly, and the unemployed, countries in the Pacific have better coverage than many in South Asia and East Asia – though, in per capita terms the expenditure tends to be fairly low. Expenditure on social protection in most AsiaPacific countries tends to be small relative to GDP 64