Social Protection
Investing in shock-responsive social protection systems builds resilience by helping citizens mitigate shocks and escape poverty. Social protection is concerned with protecting and helping those who are poor, vulnerable, marginalized or dealing with risks.
Approach
Social protection systems are typically comprised of four components:
- Protection: social assistance or as non-contributory consumption smoothing assistance (i.e., cash or food transfers)
- Prevention: social insurance or instruments that prevent the loss of income and assets (i.e., insurance, pensions, etc.)
- Promotion: labor market interventions such as employment generation and livelihood promotion, as well as investments in human capital
- Transformation: seeks to understand structural causes and drivers of vulnerability and address these systematically—and promotes agency, empowerment, social accountability, and social cohesion.
Momentum has been growing around the idea of making social protection more shock responsive and more closely linked to humanitarian response efforts. Doing so involves considering what the right balance is for humanitarian and development action in different places.
Evidence
A growing body of research shows the importance of safety nets in reducing household vulnerability. This is especially true when combining cash transfers with support to strengthen other resilience capacities, such as access to financial services and resilient livelihood pathways. When Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) and non-PSNP households in Ethiopia following a drought were compared, results showed PSNP households did better in absorbing the initial impact of the shock on their food security. PSNP households also did better in recovery to pre-drought food security status. Households with more than one hectare of land fared even better. Non-PSNP households with less than one hectare of land struggled. They were the most vulnerable to the initial impact of drought. They also had the slowest recovery.
Featured Resources
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Catastrophic weather shocks, such as severe drought or flood, are an important cause of poverty among rural households in developing economies. As...
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Event
In this webinar, we will share further details on functions of The Resilience Knowledge Coalition and start working towards implementing activities together!
Collaboration and Collective ImpactValue for MoneySystemsGovernanceSocial ProtectionHuman CapitalAspirationsSocial Inclusion -
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This evaluation explores how different productive inclusion programs impact the wellbeing and economic stability of safety net beneficiaries in Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal.
GovernanceShock Responsive ProgramsSocial ProtectionNigerBurkina FasoSenegal -
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Catastrophic weather shocks, such as severe drought or flood, are an important cause of poverty among rural households in developing economies. As the risk of these shocks is forecasted to increase, national social protection budgets will struggle to keep up with the number of households in need...
Climate Change AdaptationSocial Protection -
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The evidence, and the resulting discussion, presented during the 2017 Resilience Evidence Forum — hosted in Washington D.C. by the USAID Center for Resilience — are presented in the Resilience Evidence Forum Report.
Conflict and FragilityUrban ContextCollaboration and Collective ImpactValue for MoneySustainable Poverty EscapesDiversify Livelihood RisksSocial ProtectionGraduationSocial CapitalFinancial InclusionHuman CapitalAspirationsGender EquitySocial InclusionEcosystems and Natural Resource Management -
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Livestock—the principal store of wealth and source of livelihood for pastoralists living in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) of the Horn of Africa— face tremendous risk from the frequent and catastrophic droughts that plague the region.
Social ProtectionKenyaEthiopia -
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Households in developing rural economies face a multitude of risks. When financial alternatives are limited, in the face of disaster, households typically turn to two coping strategies: reduction of assets to smooth consumption, or reduction of consumption to protect assets. Both of these...
Social Protection