References

Overview | 35

References

Lindert, Kathy, Tina George Karippacheril, Inés Rodríguez Caillava, and Kenichi

Nishikawa Chávez. 2020. Sourcebook on the Foundations of Social Protection Delivery

Systems. Washington, DC: World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34044. World Bank. 2012. Resilience, Equity, and Opportunity. Washington, DC: World Bank

Group. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/443791468157506768 /Resilience-equity-and-opportunity-the-World-Banks-social-protection-and -labor-strategy-2012-2022. World Bank. 2021. “Social Protection and Jobs Global Compass.” PowerPoint,

World Bank, Washington, DC.

1

Targeting within Universal Social Protection

Margaret Grosh

Within the diversity of social protection systems, social contracts, and the mix of institutions and policies used to achieve them across countries, three constants shape the discourse and practice around prioritizing those in need.

First, there is a strong consensus around the determination to reduce poverty and inequality and a drive toward universal social protection. That consensus is reflected in many national policy statements and even some constitutions mandating universal social protection. The goal of universal social protection has been codified as part of the Sustainable Development Goals to be met by 2030 and supported by a long list of international organizations, including the World Bank.

Second, it is a fact of life that hundreds of social programs around the world differentiate eligibility and/or benefits in various ways. Nearly every country has at least one poverty-targeted social assistance program. Many countries have multiple programs in different parts of social policy that base eligibility or differentiate benefits according to welfare levels,1 and often one or more of these are high-profile flagship programs. Many countries have special programs to support children and the elderly, because they are deemed social priorities, more likely to be poor, or both. The unemployed may benefit from unemployment insurance, and those struck by natural disaster may benefit from assistance initially to sustain them and eventually

38 | Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance

to help them rebuild housing or livelihoods. Productive inclusion programs seek to raise the level or decrease the variability of the incomes of the poor. Active labor market policies are usually focused on those with greater barriers to (re)employment. Thinking more broadly—about those lagging in education or without access to health care or essential utility services— many more programs exist to direct various social policy efforts to members of these groups and improve life outcomes for them. These “targeted” programs assist in achieving the goals of universal coverage and sit next to universal programs in broader social policy, with the mix of universal and targeted programs varying from country to country.

Third, the job of targeting or prioritizing among individuals or groups is fraught with conceptual and practical difficulties, has errors and costs, and has many criteria and metrics by which success or lack thereof can be gauged. Thus, the issue of whether current practice is acceptable, can be improved upon, or should be abandoned recurs in instance after instance.

The tension between and within these three constants makes the choices around whether and how to target those in need of different facets of social protection a perennial topic in social protection policy discussions. Responses have varied from place to place and over time, depending on each country’s resources, the challenges it faces, and the specific progress and gaps in its social protection system and wider social policy. The varied responses have generated a rich set of global experience from which countries can draw as they review and renew their progress toward universal social protection.

The economic trauma accompanying the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic has brought higher visibility to social protection. The crisis is nearly unprecedented in its ubiquity, but the issues it highlights are not new: social protection coverage has always been partial. There are gaps in social assistance of various intensities for the chronic poor and the informal sector uncovered by labor protections; delivery systems are often too rigid to respond fully to shocks whether from natural disasters or economic turbulence; how to use social protection to connect poor or unemployed people to better independent incomes is an enduring issue; and financing is a constraint to realizing the full vision of universal social protection. The dramatic scale of response to the current crisis highlights both what can be done when exceptional effort is made and the extent of the need for improvement.

This chapter is the first of three chapters on the tensions between the idea of universal social protection and the idea of targeting specific programs to specific groups. The chapter covers the tensions between universal social protection and targeting in an abstract sense. Chapter 2 takes up the empirics of the errors and costs of targeting those more in need of social protection. Chapter 3 moves from the abstract to more concrete issues in