Social Protection
Concept & Definition :
● Social protection is related to programs or policies against vulnerability & poverty.
● Social protection is generally referred to the society related programs which provide
social security against the socially vulnerable conditions such as poverty, old age,
disability, unemployment and others.
● A specific set of actions to address the vulnerability of people’s life through social
insurance, social assistance and inclusion efforts. (NSSS)
● Social protection refers to the public actions taken in response to levels of vulnerability,
risk and deprivation which are deemed socially unacceptable within a given polity or
society. …
● Policies and programmes designed to reduce poverty and vulnerability by promoting
efficient labour markets, diminishing people's exposure to risks, and enhancing their
capacity to manage economic and social risks, such as unemployment, exclusion,
sickness, disability and old age. (UN)
Social protection refers to programs that help people in society when they face difficult
situations. These situations could be being poor, old age, having a disability, losing a
job, or other hardships. It's like a safety net for people who are going through tough
times.
Social protection is also seen as the actions a society takes when many people are
vulnerable, at risk, or lack basic needs in a way that is considered unacceptable. This
includes helping the poorest but also giving security to people who are not poor right
now in case bad things happen.
These actions can be taken by the government or non-government organizations, or
both working together.
● Different definitions:
○ The International Labour Organization (ILO) says social protection covers all
the ways people are protected if they lose income due to illness, old age,
unemployment, or other difficulties.
○ The World Bank has a narrower definition, seeing it as government actions
focused on helping people manage risks and supporting the very poor who
cannot help themselves.
○ The Bangladesh government's idea of social protection is closer to the
World Bank's.
○ Bangladesh's constitution also talks about the right to public help if someone is
in need because of unemployment, sickness, disability, or if they are
widows, orphans, or elderly.
Types of Social Protection (5 types)
There are five main types1 of social protection programs:
Social Assistance: These are non-contributory programs, usually funded by taxes, that
provide regular and predictable help (like cash or food) to poor and vulnerable people.
Examples include:
○ Cash transfers: Giving money directly to people. The Old Age Allowance and
Vulnerable Group Development (VGD) programs provide direct cash or food
support to poor and vulnerable populations in Bangladesh.
○ Social pensions: Regular payments to older adults. Bangladesh’s Old Age
Allowance program offers regular cash payments to elderly poor citizens.
○ In-kind transfers: Providing goods like food or clothing. The Food for Work
program distributes food grains to poor households in exchange for labor on
public projects
○ School feeding programs: Providing meals at school. Bangladesh’s School
Feeding Program provides meals to children in primary schools to improve
nutrition and attendance.
○ Public works programs: Giving people jobs on public projects in exchange for
payment. The Employment Generation Program for the Poorest (EGPP)
offers temporary jobs on public infrastructure projects to poor households
Social Insurance: These are usually contributory, meaning people (and sometimes their
employers or the government) make regular payments. These programs protect against loss of
income due to events like:
○ Medical insurance: Helps cover healthcare costs. Bangladesh is in early stages
of developing social health insurance; pilot schemes like the Shasthyo
Surokhsha Karmasuchi (SSK) aim to provide health coverage for informal
workers.
○ Old age pensions: Income for people after they retire. Formal pensions exist for
government employees but are limited for informal sector workers; Bangladesh is
working to expand social insurance frameworks.
○ Unemployment benefits: Payments to people who have lost their jobs. In the
U.S., the policy Unemployment Insurance (UI) is a joint state-federal initiative
designed to provide temporary financial assistance to workers who have lost their
jobs through no fault of their own.
○ Maternity benefits: Support for women during pregnancy and after childbirth.
Some maternity leave and benefits are provided under labor laws for formal
sector workers in Bangladesh.
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○ Survivors assistance: providing financial or other forms of support to the
surviving dependents of a deceased person. Limited formal survivors’ benefits
exist, mainly for government employees; broader schemes are under discussion.
Labour Market Intervention: These programs aim to help people find jobs and ensure fair
treatment in the workplace. Examples include:
○ Job centers: Help people search for employment. Bangladesh’s Upazila
Employment and Training Centers help job seekers find employment and
provide vocational training.
○ Training programs: Provide skills to improve employability. The Skills for
Employment Investment Program (SEIP) offers vocational training to improve
employability of youth and women.
○ Compensation: Payments for job loss or work-related injuries. Workers’
compensation for workplace injuries is mandated under Bangladesh labor law,
primarily for formal sector employees.
Informal Social Protection: These are traditional, community-based ways people help each
other. Examples include:
○ Community support systems: Neighbors and family helping each other in
need. Rural Bangladesh has strong informal networks of mutual help, such as
shomaj (community groups).
○ Charity: Donations and help from individuals or groups. Religious and
NGO-based charity organizations like Zakat funds and BRAC provide informal
social support.
Other Types: This category includes things that act as safety nets but don't fit neatly into the
other categories. Examples include:
○ Subsidies: Government reducing the cost of essential goods or services.
Bangladesh provides subsidies on essential food items like rice and cooking oil
through the Open Market Sales program to keep prices affordable.
○ Price support: Measures to keep prices stable for certain goods. The
government stabilizes prices of staple foods like rice and wheat through buffer
stocks and procurement policies.
Functions of Social Protection
Social protection serves several important functions:[Optional]
● Protective: Providing relief from hardship and basic needs when people are already
facing deprivation, such as through income benefits or state pensions.
● Preventive: Helping people and households avoid falling into poverty or experiencing
deprivation in the first place, for example, through social insurance or savings clubs.
● Promotive: Enhancing people's incomes and capabilities so they can improve their
living standards, such as through training programs or providing resources for small
businesses.
● Transformative: Addressing social inequalities and promoting inclusion,
empowerment, and rights, for instance, through labor laws or policies that challenge
unequal power dynamics.
Social Protection serves several important functions.2 We can understand them in the context of
the functions described below : [***]
1. Economic resilience: Social protection supports economic resilience by enabling
people to be better prepared for, absorb, and cope with shocks, and to bounce back
from setbacks. Individuals covered by social protection programs are more capable of
protecting their social and economic conditions in the face of vulnerability. For instance,
social health protection can prevent impoverishment due to high medical costs, thus
safeguarding productive assets, and adequate cash transfers can prevent farmers from
selling essential land and livestock.
2. Ensure equity: The function of ensuring equity is closely linked to the transformative
aspect of social protection. This transformative function aims for social equity and
inclusion, empowerment, and the realization of rights. Social protection policies can
rebalance unequal power relations and reverse barriers that cause vulnerabilities.
Furthermore, social justice, often considered a component related to social protection,
ensures social rights and equality. By reducing resource inequality, social protection can
contribute to building social cohesion.
3. Preventive measures: This directly aligns with the preventive function of social
protection. Preventive measures in social protection aim at averting deprivation.
Examples of preventive social protection can include social insurance schemes that help
individuals manage risks like unemployment or illness, thus preventing them from falling
into poverty when such events occur. Savings clubs and other risk management tools
also fall under this category.
4. Self-sustainability promote: This relates to the promotive function of social protection.
The promotive function focuses on enhancing incomes and capabilities. Social
protection can provide an external push to help the poor escape the poverty trap. Small
amounts of social allowances are often invested by beneficiaries in small-scale livelihood
development activities, promoting their ability to care for themselves and their families.
Moreover, the security provided by social protection can encourage people to engage in
riskier but potentially more rewarding economic activities, enhancing their scope for
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better livelihoods.
5. Conditional support provider: Social protection programs, particularly those under
social assistance, can act as conditional support providers. These programs often
involve cash transfers or in-kind transfers provided on the condition that beneficiaries
meet certain requirements, such as children attending school or families utilizing
healthcare services. For example, the Food-for-Education Programme and Primary
Education Stipend Programme in Bangladesh are conditional cash transfer programs
designed to incentivize school enrollment and attendance. Similarly, the Maternal Health
Voucher Scheme provides subsidies for accessing maternal healthcare services,
conditional on utilizing those services. These conditions aim to maximize the impact of
the support by promoting human capital development and improved well-being.
Broad Approaches to Social Protection in Bangladesh
Bangladesh employs several key approaches to social protection, each with distinct
philosophies, strategies, and impacts. The three most widely discussed are the
1. Poor Relief Approach
2. Social Risk Management (SRM) Approach
3. Lifecycle Approach
Poor Relief Approach
● Originated in 19th-century Europe and later adopted by developing countries, including
Bangladesh
● Focuses on short-term poverty alleviation by providing immediate, limited resources to
the poor.
● Lacks a comprehensive, long-term strategy to tackle the root causes of poverty.
● Prone to large targeting errors and suffers from small budgets, often leading to
inefficiency and limited impact.
● Example: Food or cash handouts to the poorest without broader social or economic
support measures.
Social Risk Management (SRM) Approach
● Developed by the World Bank in the 1990s to broaden the scope of social protection.
● Aims to reduce vulnerability by addressing prevention, mitigation, and coping strategies
for risks, especially for the poor.
● Encourages risk-taking (e.g., entrepreneurial activities) by providing safety nets, thus
helping people transition out of chronic poverty.
● Risks are categorized as:
○ Catastrophic vs. non-catastrophic shocks
○ Idiosyncratic (individual) vs. covariant (community-wide) shocks
○ Single vs. repeated shocks
● Strategies include:
○ Prevention: Reducing the likelihood of risks (e.g., health insurance)
○ Mitigation: Lessening the impact of risks (e.g., community savings groups)
○ Coping: Support after risks occur (e.g., emergency relief)
● Example: Risk and Vulnerability Assessments (RVAs) and targeted interventions for
groups like working children, unemployed youth, and the disabled.
Lifecycle Approach
● Recognizes that individuals face different risks and vulnerabilities at various life stages,
from birth to old age.
● Focuses on providing social protection tailored to each stage of life, ensuring continuous
support.
● Involves long-term planning and aims for universal or near-universal coverage.
● Adopted in Bangladesh through the National Social Security Strategy (NSSS), which
organizes support into five age clusters: young children, school-age children,
working-age people, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
● Example: Child benefits, school stipends, unemployment support, old-age pensions, and
disability allowances.
● The NSSS aims to bring over 30 million people under safety net programmes, with a
focus on reducing poverty, inequality, and supporting economic growth.
In summary:
Bangladesh’s social protection system has evolved from short-term poor relief to more
comprehensive approaches. The current focus is on the lifecycle approach, as seen in the
National Social Security Strategy, aiming to provide tailored support across all stages of life and
reduce poverty and vulnerability in a sustainable way.
Examples for Better Understanding [Optional]
➔ Poor Relief: Vulnerable group feeding programmes, cash-for-work schemes during
disasters.
➔ SRM Approach: Micro-insurance for farmers, government disaster relief funds, social
health insurance.
➔ Lifecycle Approach:
◆ Child grants for nutrition and education,
◆ Allowances for widows or single mothers,
◆ Old-age pensions,
◆ Disability benefits,
◆ Mandatory and voluntary pension schemes for different employment sectors.
Summary Table: Comparison of Social Protection
Approaches
Approach Key Features Main Focus Example in Strengths Weaknesses
Bangladesh
Poor Relief Short-term, Immediate Food/cash Quick Not
immediate aid poverty relief handouts response comprehensive,
targeting errors,
small budgets
Social Risk Prevention, Reducing Micro-insurance, Encourages Complex
Management mitigation, vulnerability disaster relief risk-taking, implementation,
coping with holistic requires
risks coordination
Lifecycle Support at all Comprehensive NSSS: child Universal, Requires
life stages, coverage grants, addresses significant
long-term pensions, root causes resources,
planning disability complex
support management
Key Challenges and Policy Options [Social Safety Net]
Based on the provided sources, here is a summary of the "Key Challenges and Policy
Options" section in bullet points:
Increasing Coverage and Maximizing Program Effects
Challenge: The number of people covered by programs is only a fraction of those in need,
estimated to be only about 4 to 5 million people receiving some form of assistance.
Policy Options:
Increase focus on programs that remove impediments to growth, contribute to human capital
development (health and education), and physical asset development.
This could include self-targeted public works programs for labor-intensive construction and
maintenance of small-scale infrastructure like roads and irrigation.
Also, conditional transfer programs like existing scholarship programs for education and the
piloted voucher program for maternal/child mortality are worth expanding, especially to reduce
child labor and malnutrition, given their positive experience in Bangladesh and other countries
and associated externalities
Reducing the Impact of Seasonality
Challenge: Annual difficulties arise from climatic conditions, such as the "monga" season when
rural employment opportunities drop sharply. Large shocks like floods and typhoons also
interrupt people's ability to earn a living, potentially leading them deeper into poverty.
Policy Option: Provide programs to cover these seasons, for example, by rolling out public
works programs during such times to help households smooth their consumption spending and
avoid human capital losses.
Increasing Focus on the Urban Poor
Challenge: While urban poverty is less than rural poverty in absolute terms, it is rising
proportionally, a concerning trend given urbanization. Social safety net programs are
predominantly rural-based.
Policy Options:
Develop methodologies for creating urban profiles similar to rural food insecurity maps
Develop procedures for targeting urban areas based on these profiles.
Develop administrative arrangements for selecting program participants or infrastructure works
once target areas are chosen.
The government could support NGOs that have been successful in delivering programs targeted
at the poor in urban areas.
Improving Targeting
Challenge: Current targeting criteria may not be appropriate, with evidence suggesting they can
lead to significant misallocation of resources. For example, using land criteria (less than 5
decimals) alone would incorrectly include a third of households that are non-poor.
Policy Options:
Change targeting criteria to focus on factors more closely related to occupation and income
rather than assets like land. Criteria like occupation and dwelling characteristics (e.g., access to
electricity, toilets) could be used to reduce potential misallocation.
Ensure targeting criteria are consistent across programs, which supports program consolidation.
Implement self-targeting programs, taking care to set wage levels or grain types appropriately
so that only the poorest are attracted and autonomous employment creation is not adversely
affected.
Reducing Leakages
Challenge: Leakage remains an important issue, with studies reporting estimates of 10-50
percent for food-based programs and 5-25 percent for cash-based programs. Leakage rates for
programs like FFW, RD, VGD, and VGF were noted in the source.
Policy Options:
Monetize benefits to address some concerns regarding leakages from food transfer programs,
although this alone is not sufficient.
Minimize the number of intermediaries in program delivery and make their decisions
transparent, especially regarding variable entitlements, to reduce leakage. Cash transfers
should ensure beneficiaries receive full entitlements. Food transfers need transparent
procedures guaranteeing full delivery and monitoring to ensure intermediary accountability.
Administering Social Protection Effectively
Challenge: Social safety net programs are administered through numerous agencies, NGOs,
and international partners, leading to frequent overlap and inadequate coordination across
ministries.
Policy Options:
Adopt an integrated approach to social protection.
Foster coordination between agencies administering programs, possibly through inter-agency
mechanisms like forums for policy development and administration (e.g., Budget Committees,
Inter-Ministerial Committees).
Over time, as programs are monetized, the government could consider using a single agency to
administer safety net programs, or at least have one agency responsible for all cash payments.
Outsource the delivery of social assistance programs at the local level to competitively selected
agents responsible for beneficiary selection and, for food aid, final distribution.
Improving Monitoring and Evaluation
Challenge: Inadequate program monitoring can lead to undetected problems like leakage and
misallocation. A lack of program evaluation and understanding of impact can result in
uninformed decision-making.
Policy Options:
Put greater emphasis on external monitoring in addition to monitoring by line agencies.
Due to low administrative capacity within ministries, contract out program monitoring to
independent, competitively selected agencies.
Line ministries should enhance their capacity for day-to-day monitoring, complemented by
random monitoring by external agents to assess targeting, beneficiary receipt of benefits, and
ministry monitoring effectiveness.
