Poverty in Focus
17
Job Guarantee Investments in the Social Sector: Lessons from South Africa’s Expanded Public Works Programme
by Rania Antonopoulos, Levy Economics Institute1
The International Labour Organization (2013) estimates that global unemployment hit almost 200 million people in 2012. Moreover, many developing countries around the world are experiencing persistently high levels of unstable employment and underemployment. What might the role of ‘productive social protection’, defined as employmentbased or employment-friendly social protection interventions, be in this context? Surely, employment-based social protection cannot be hoped to substitute an inclusive and job-rich development path, at least not for any extended period of time. Many countries have long deployed public works and employment programmes focused on creating infrastructure and physical assets as a means of addressing both seasonal and cyclical unemployment. However, this article seeks to identify what I regard as the most pressing aspects of employment-based social protection relative to current macro policy and the labour market. Specifically, although standard infrastructure and asset creation types of programmes are unquestionably important, attention here is given to employment programmes that address care deficits for young, elderly and seriously ill or disabled people. In an earlier US simulation study (Antonopoulos, 2011), I found that an investment in services for social care would generate more than twice the number of jobs—1.2 million versus 500,000—than comparable investment in physical infrastructure, largely due to the higher labour intensity of care work. That same research also indicates that, in addition to producing more jobs per dollar spent, in practice these types of
social care investment reach the least well-off and at the same time produce relatively more gains from the perspective of gender equity: first, by reducing the burden of care (particularly welcome to women who work a double day) and, second, by substantially expanding income-earning opportunities for women.
From a macroeconomic point of view, ELR is a unique and valuable form of active labour market policy that functions as an automatic stabiliser.
What this shows, I argue, is the crucial need for social care investment programmes implemented within a framework of an employer of last resort (ELR), providing necessary scale, intuitional resilience and continuity.
South Africa is a standout example. Introduced in 2004, this country’s Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) is a national job creation initiative now in its second phase (2009–2014), with high prospects for a third phase.
The key feature of an ELR pertains to unstable markets unable to generate sufficient numbers of job opportunities, whereby the government, in this case, now steps in through public service job creation and provides employment to anyone willing and able to work at minimum wage.
Thus far, little effort has been made with respect to drawing in marginalised segments of the population via the creation of jobs in the social services sector.
At its core, therefore, ELR protects against joblessness via an ‘employment benefit’ —in other words, ‘employment insurance’. When set up as a permanent institutional feature of the economy, from a macroeconomic point of view, ELR is a unique and valuable form of active labour market policy that functions as an automatic stabiliser. South Africa is a standout example. Introduced in 2004, this country’s Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) is a national job creation initiative now in its second phase (2009–2014), with high prospects for a third phase. In a 2008 study, given particular focus here, Antonopoulos and Kijong found the EPWP to be groundbreaking as a social-sector intervention. The two pillars of the 2008 analysis were a gender-
1.Senior scholar and director of the Levy Institute’s Gender Equality and the Economy programme. She holds a PhD in Economics from the New School for Social Research. Her research publications are available at <www.levyinstitute.org>. 2. Learnership combines work-based experience with structured learning, and results in a qualification, registered within the National Qualifications Framework by the South African Qualification Authority, that signals occupational competence and is recognised throughout the country.