There is increasing interest in social protection as a ‘developmental’ and ‘transformative’ tool. Existing evaluations of social protection programmes discuss effects on people’s well-being, but rarely allow inferences about people’s ability to alter what drives their deprivation and vulnerability. This paper presents a way of using the concept of social exclusion to enhance the analysis and evaluation of social protection policies and programmes.
Social exclusion serves as a framework for understanding the political, economic, social and institutional context that shapes human vulnerabilities. Its application to social protection allows greater emphasis on the local context and the integration of detailed and many-sided contextual analyses of vulnerability and deprivation.
The proposed framework focuses on exclusion from income sources, from essential services and from social and political participation. It suggests that social protection interventions be assessed against their ability to address the outcomes and the drivers of exclusion:
- Analysis of outcomes looks at the extent to which an intervention contributes to enhancing well-being within a specific dimension (e.g. income, access to services, or social and political participation).
- Analysis of drivers of exclusion identifies the extent to which the intervention tackles the factors that limit individual ability to generate sufficient income, access essential services and take part in social and public life. Drivers might be at the individual level, such as vulnerabilities related to the life course, or at the societal and group level, such as discriminatory norms and practices. The identification of drivers of exclusion can establish the limits of the social protection intervention and identify institutional arrangements that can tackle different dimensions of exclusion more effectively.
For example, cash transfers can improve people’s purchasing capacity and enable access to services and opportunities. However, the transfers might not tackle the root causes of income deprivation, which could be affected by structural factors such as lack of secure land ownership.
The assessment of the social exclusion/inclusion effects of social protection is not straightforward and requires realistic criteria. It is important to note that:
- Social protection programmes can reinforce inequalities.
- Social exclusion spans multiple dimensions, but social protection can only have a positive impact within a few specific sectors/areas.
- Social protection programmes may only address the outcomes of exclusion, rather than its drivers.
- Tackling social exclusion and promoting inclusion requires a gradual, incremental approach. The result of policies and programmes may become apparent only in the medium to long term.
- It is difficult to achieve ‘full’ inclusion. Therefore, it is more appropriate to evaluate a contribution of social protection to exclusion/inclusion, rather than to assess success or failure in achieving full inclusion.
- Design features including the benefit value, length and regularity of provision, are important in determining the extent of an intervention’s contribution to social exclusion/inclusion.
The social exclusion lens makes it possible to unpack the complex relationship between income and non-income aspects of well-being. It does so by focusing on the role of income in access to essential services and social participation and by highlighting the contribution of social and institutional factors to economic vulnerability.
Use of the social exclusion framework can inform programme design and implementation by helping to establish the strengths and limitations of existing social protection arrangements. For example, an analysis of a cash transfer programme can establish its limits in tackling factors outside its ‘sectoral reach’. It can identify areas where the programme can be linked to, and coordinated with, interventions in other sectoral areas to address drivers of exclusion more effectively. And it can stimulate broader policy reforms, such as establishing equal minority rights or improving administrative efficiency, to ensure complementarity among policies.
The framework can be a useful analytical tool even when social protection programmes do not aim to promote empowerment, capability or institutionalised access to services. Applying the framework can help policymakers understand the local context (and therefore what drives deprivation and vulnerability) and identify policy gaps.
Finally, the social exclusion framework is a useful instrument for social analysis before an intervention is designed, allowing policymakers and practitioners to identify opportunities and risks to policies and programmes. In particular, in-depth contextual analysis of existing deprivations and their drivers can create realistic expectations about what social protection can achieve and help to establish feasible goals and benchmarks.