Protection Measured?

Targeting within Universal Social Protection | 41

BOX 1.1

How Are Coverage and Universal Social Protection Measured?

In some fields of policy, the objective is equality of outcomes, and that requires equality of inputs. In elections, the goal is for everyone to have one vote and only one vote. In health, the goal is for everyone to have the number of vaccines it takes to produce immunity to the given disease, which varies by disease and formulation of vaccine but not usually by individual. The goal of democracy or immunity takes an action, and the same “dose” for everyone yields the same outcome.

In many spheres, equality of outcomes or at least everyone reaching a minimum standard is desired, but it takes different inputs to achieve that. For example, the Sustainable Development Goals contain the goal of every child learning to read by grade 2. That takes physical access to schools for everyone, which will be more expensive to provide per capita in remote areas than in urban areas, and it may take scholarships or cash transfers to help poor households with the implicit costs of schooling, glasses for children with vision impairments, special teaching techniques for children with learning challenges, and so forth. The universal policy of free schooling is supplemented with actions focused on smaller groups of children for whom the universal policies are insufficient. Thus, in the successive actions—for multigrade or tele-schooling or boarding schools for children in the most remote areas, scholarships for poor children, glasses for children with vision impairment, and discerning which children have learning impairments and need special instruction—differentiated eligibility or services are used toward the goal of universal education. Even in the voting and vaccination examples, although the goal is one vote for each adult or one inoculation for each child, that is, “the same dose,” it may take much more active and costly outreach to connect some people to the voting booth or vaccination site. The poor, those in remote areas, the least educated, and those of socially excluded ethnicities may need special efforts to inform them of the value and safety of voting and vaccines and to get services close enough to them to ensure universal coverage.

Measuring progress toward universal social protection is somewhat more difficult than for the voting, vaccination, and reading examples cited. Universal social protection requires coverage, but

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