This report outlines recommendations on how to extend social protection coverage through the social protection floor approach. A social protection floor involves an integrated set of nationally-driven and tailored policies designed to guarantee a) income security (through social transfers in cash or in kind); and b) universal access to essential, affordable social services. The successful phasing-in of a social protection floor will require political will, fiscal space and effective institutions. Where low-income countries require some initial assistance for social protection floor initiatives, donors need to improve aid coordination and provide multi-year, direct budgetary support and capacity building.
The social protection floor approach has been developed by the International Labour Organisation and endorsed by the UN. It pays particular attention to vulnerable groups and to protecting and empowering people across the life cycle. The concept is part of a two-dimensional strategy: social guarantees for all (horizontal dimension), and the gradual implementation of higher standards (vertical dimension).
International experience suggests that countries can move faster in reducing poverty and social exclusion by addressing these issues in a coherent and consistent way, starting by extending access to essential social services and income security. Effective country-specific social protection floors, which can gradually expand, are not only affordable for even low-income countries but can eventually pay for themselves. They can enhance workers’ productiveness and the stability of the political process.
Experience within and across countries offers lessons for overcoming design and implementation challenges. First, national social protection floor policies benefit from long-term policy development, and implementation plans need to be based on national consensus. In addition:
- A clear fiscal framework is needed that establishes the approximate cost of each floor component on an ongoing basis, together with a detailed mapping of the fiscal resources that need to be generated.
- Clear strategies to minimise risks should be in place to guarantee effective delivery of benefits and services.
- As failures in public services erode the value of social assistance grants, income support by itself may have limited impact unless it is linked with access to other public services.
- A key factor in implementing social protection floors is improved coordination among all development actors to eliminate overlaps, reduce inefficiencies and develop synergies. Lack of aid coordination has led to small pilot programmes with limited ability to be either scaled up or sustainable.
- Political support for the development of monitoring and evaluation capacity is vital.
While the design and implementation of nationally-defined social protection floors should follow country-specific dynamics, a number of principles should be taken into account. These include:
- A gradual and progressive phasing-in process, building on existing schemes
- Coordination and coherence among social programmes. The floor should address vulnerabilities affecting people of different ages and socioeconomic conditions, and should be regarded as a framework for coordinated interventions at the household level, addressing multidimensional causes of poverty and social exclusion and aiming to unlock productive capacity
- Combining income transfers with educational, nutritional and health objectives
- Combining income replacement functions with active labour market policies as well as assistance and incentives that promote participation in the formal labour market
- Ensuring economic affordability and long-term fiscal sustainability, anchored in predictable and sustainable domestic funding sources – although international assistance may be needed to help start the process in some low-income countries
- Maintaining an effective legal and normative framework, so as to establish clear rights and responsibilities for all parties involved
- An adequate institutional framework with sufficient budgetary resources, well-trained professionals and effective governance rules with the participation of stakeholders
- Ensuring mechanisms to promote gender equality and support the empowerment of women.
Aid financing for the social protection floor has tended to adopt a transient ‘project’ approach. Instead, donors need to provide predictable multi-year funding. Donors also need to agree on triangular cooperation mechanisms and to focus concerted international aid on direct budgetary support and capacity building.
