Introduction CCT Programs Impact Evaluation and Fiduciary Mechanisms | Accountability Focus Areas Malnutrition | Poverty Assessments | Shocks and Social Protection | Youth-at-Risk Country Highlights Social Assistance in Brazil | Colombia Social Protection System Introduction The main objective of the Latin America Caribbean Region’s Social Protection Team is to help countries in the region increase equity and coverage of Social Protection (SP) systems. Strong client demand and a willingness—on the parts of both clients and the Bank—to innovate, to push the frontiers of SP, and to continuously monitor, evaluate, and improve are leading to measurable improvements in the effectiveness, sustainability, and impact of SP policies and programs. The challenges we are addressing in our analytical and lending activities include: (i) understanding informality and delinking access to SP from labor market participation, (ii) reforming truncated, inequitable pension and social insurance programs and extending coverage, (iii) transforming segmented, sometimes overlapping, social assistance programs, (iv) fostering program evolution from welfare to work and developing strategies for youth at risk, (iv) supporting CCT programs, giving special attention to their fiduciary management and control and accountability mechanisms, and to emancipation and exit strategies, (v) improving governments’ responsiveness to shocks, (vi) moving beyond SIFs and developing more comprehensive and sustainable SP strategies in the lower income countries, (vii) carrying out studies and designing programs to reduce malnutrition, and (viii) mainstreaming M&E in SP programs. The Social Protection Team delivered six investment operations for a total of US$560 million, representing 40 percent of lending for the region’s Human Development portfolio in FY06. In addition, it delivered six Analytical tasks, co-task managed two poverty assessments, and led or participated in Regional Studies on Redistribution and Transfers, Beyond Survival, Youth at Risk and Informality. This Retrospective focuses on areas which were given attention during FY06. Support to CCT Programs – focus on impact evaluation and review of fiduciary and accountability mechanisms. In FY06, the Latin America and Caribbean Region's Social Protection Team completed the preparation of projects to support the second phase of the Familias en Acción program in Colombia, the Red Solidaria program in El Salvador, the Bono de Desarrollo Humano program in Ecuador, the Jefes de Hogar program in Argentina and has advanced the preparation of a project to support the Solidaridad Program in the Dominican Republic. During preparation we have focused on including lessons learned in other programs to improve program effectiveness and on ensuring complementarity with social service delivery programs and have continued giving priority attention to the design and implementation of the Monitoring and Evaluation of the Programs. In addition we have continued supporting the M&E in ongoing programs, namely of Familias en Acción in Colombia, of Bolsa Familia in Brazil and of Chile Solidario. The Colombia Familias en Acción project, the Bank’s first CCT program, which began in 2001, has been accompanied from the start by an evaluation agenda to better understand the role that the program can play in the reduction of extreme poverty. Using longitudinal data (baseline in 2001, first measurement in 2004, second measurement in 2006), the evaluation has found that the program has improved the well-being of participants, relative to a control group, in particular: 15 percent increase in children’s food consumption, particularly vegetables and milk; increased vaccinations by 7-12 percentage points and 11 percent reduction in the incidence of diarrhea among children age 2-4; increased height of 0-4 year olds by ¾ cm and increased weight by ½ kg; 5-10 percent more 12-17 year olds attending school and 3 percent more children age 8-11 attending school; increased expenditures on children by US$23 equivalent monthly and no increase in household consumption of alcohol, tobacco, or adult clothing; and 6 percent reduction in the proportion of the population below the poverty line. In addition to the third measurement of the original Familias en Acción program, the government is using its own resources and technical assistance from the Bank to measure the impacts of the program in rural areas, in non-banking areas, and for the displaced population. The impact evaluation of Chile Solidario program, undertaken after the first two years of operation, found that the program tends to improve education and health outcomes of the participating households, increases significantly their take-up of other cash assistance programs and of social programs for housing and employment. There is no evidence that the participation in employment programs translates into improved employment or income outcomes in the short term. There is suggestive evidence of the key role that the psycho-social support had in enabling these changes, by increasing awareness of social services in the community as well as households' orientation towards the future. In Brazil, the Bank has been providing support to both impact evaluations and other M&E activities of the Bolsa Familia Program (BFP), created in 2003 as a merger of the four pre-existing conditional cash transfer programs. It consists of a longitudinal study that measures impact on: (a) food expenditures and diversity of food intake; (b) the anthropometric status of children under seven years of age; (c) household expenditures on schooling, health and clothing, and other household expenditures; (d) school outcomes; and (e) health care use. The first round of data collection was conducted in late 2005, and the second will be conducted later this year (with follow up data collection every year for at least five years). The Bank also provided technical support to strengthen overall monitoring and evaluation of the BF program, including: (a) evaluating the quality of implementation in Brazil’s decentralized context; (b) social control evaluations designed to promote social accountability and citizen oversight; and (c) evaluations of targeting outcomes and impact (including impact on local economies and stimulation of supply side for social services; education outcomes; etc). CCT Programs: Control and Accountability Review. In the context of the Regional Risk Review, the Social Protection team carried out a Special Review to assess the control and accountability systems of Bank financed CCT programs to identify areas that may need improvement. The review included initial benchmarking of OECD practices, case studies on each of the programs supported by the Bank, and a two day review of all of the programs including participation of outside experts together with a multi-sectoral Bank team. In sum, the review concluded that the basic control systems are in place and there are no major red flags but that there is variation in performance across countries and that as the programs advance it will be necessary to focus more deeply in the definition of institutional responsibilities and on incentives and coordination across the service delivery providers and in supporting the deeper implementation of MIS and control and accountability systems. In terms of targeting, the review found that the programs are designed effectively to reach the poorest groups relying on independently verifiable targeting instruments and there is evidence that they are performing well in this respect. In the area of controls and accountability, the outside experts concluded that Bank-financed CCT programs are handling potential risks adequately. They also concluded that CCT payment processes do not seem to carry major risk, given that they tend to be small and the validation of conditionalities largely reduces susceptibility to fraud. The review noted that all of these programs incorporate accountability mechanisms in multiple ways. This feature can be a strength as long as arrangements are carefully structured with attention to incentives, clarity of roles and avoiding potential for conflicts of interest. The outside experts emphasized the importance of continued strengthening of quality control and correction mechanisms (feedback loops) and accompanying MIS systems to further enhance the quality and security of services. Promoting an Effective Approach against Malnutrition. Malnutrition High priority has been given to supporting client countries where malnutrition is high, especially in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and the Andean countries. The goal is to support the implementation of programs that build on community-based growth promotion interventions known as AIN-C which has demonstrated very positive impacts on mothers’ knowledge, attitudes, and behavioral practices related to child nutrition, child rearing, and family demand for health care, as well as on child nutritional status. The Bank is currently supporting these interventions as well as monitoring and a rigorous impact evaluation in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. In Nicaragua, the Bank is financing a process evaluation of the impact of the PROCOSAN program on child nutritional status. In the Andean countries, a number of initiatives are being carried out: (i) a Nutrition study in Ecuador; (ii) a CCT project in Ecuador directed inter alia to improving malnutrition; (iii) an impact evaluation of the CCT project in Ecuador; (iv) a Performance-Based Nutrition project in Peru; (v) a Social Assistance country review in Peru with emphasis on malnutrition; (vi) a Grant to regulate food micronutrient fortification in Bolivia; (vii) a new health project with emphasis on nutrition in Bolivia. Collaboration with PREM on Poverty Assessments. The Social Protection Team has produced, together with PREM, Poverty Assessment in Argentina and Costa Rica, and also contributed to the one in Panama. The Argentinean Poverty Assessment comprises two stages. The first stage included the preparation of background reports, analysis of existing data sources, and the design and implementation of a special module attached to the household survey in Buenos Aires metropolitan area. A report describing advances in this stage was delivered at the end of FY06. The second will be developed in FY07 and it will expand the work including topics such as motivations to be formal/informal, working careers, links between labor informality and firm informality, and informality status of self employed workers. In June 2006, the Bank delivered the Costa Rica Poverty Assessment to the newly elected government. The government is placing high priority on reducing poverty rates, which have stagnated over the last decade despite consistent economic growth. The Poverty Assessment, developed in close collaboration with governmental and non-governmental stakeholders, analyzes the factors underlying stagnating poverty rates, including recent changes in the labor market, immigration from Nicaragua, and significant growth in the share of single-parent, female-headed households. The report also places special emphasis on the role of the social sectors – education, health, and social protection – on enabling the poor to escape poverty. Discussion of the report with key counterparts is underway, as prelude for a larger public conference on the study, scheduled for late August 2006. In Panama, the Bank is supporting the government through a combined set of analytical and operational work to support efforts to reduce poverty and inequality while improving the effectiveness of public spending. Key parts of this strategy include the Poverty Assessment and the Public Expenditure Review which recommend specific courses of action in consultation with government officials and contributed to identifying a CCT project to promote access to basic services by the poorest in the country and to design the targeting strategy. The social safety net assessment in the PA focused on the analysis of the programs which could be rationalized to enhance the impact of the proposed project and the chapter on indigenous poverty provided a first assessment of the issues facing indigenous people as they try and access basic social services which is helping the design of the CCT program. Dissemination and Impact of the Shocks and Social Protection Study The “Shocks and Social Protection: Lessons from the Central American Coffee Crisis” study is part of an ongoing engagement between the World Bank and its counterparts in Central America on social protection, comprising both policy dialogue and operational support to governments to extend basic services to their poorest inhabitants and to protect the vulnerable families from the most deleterious impacts of shocks. The report was undertaken in response to requests from several Central American governments for support in understanding the welfare impacts of the coffee crisis and its broader lessons for public policy. Since completion of the report, dissemination activities have been carried out in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The findings are integral to our ongoing work on strengthening social protection in El Salvador, where the government recently launched a safety net program supported by the Bank (and the IDB); the study also contributed to the concept and design of a pilot program in Nicaragua that is using a conditional cash transfer program, the RPS, to help protect poor families against shocks. Dissemination activities generated widespread media attention in Latin America. As a result, the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia subsequently published a Spanish language article on the key findings and messages of the study (authored by the report team); the team also disseminated the study in Bogotá in April 2006, as part of a larger seminar organized by the Federación on strengthening social protection in Colombia. The Caribbean Social Protection Strategy Report stimulated dialogue not only with country clients but also non-traditional stakeholders like the Caribbean Congress of Labor. The Report was also instrumental in engaging donors (Caribbean Development Bank, DfID, EU) on the social protection agenda and to work together more effectively in the region. Youth at-Risk: A New Challenge for the Region The youth at-risk agenda has been growing over the past five years in the Bank, and the LAC Region has been leading the way through the leadership of the SP Team. The SP Team, with the collaboration of ESSD, FPSI, PREM, and the HD Hub have developed a multi-sectoral, cohesive program that (i) identifies the role that youth development plays in the Bank’s mission, (ii) develops a framework for understanding youth at-risk, (iii) creates empirical tools to understand the reasons for and impacts of at-risk youth, and (iv) identifies Bank and Government tools to best address the needs of at-risk youth. The SP Team’s program has resulted in several publications, technical inputs to the WDR 2007, and the Bank’s Regional Study on Youth at-Risk, which is expected to be completed in November 2006. It has also resulted in a Project in the Dominican Republic and a component of a project in Honduras. BRASA (Social Assistance) Program in Brazil The objectives are to help strengthen the effectiveness of Brazil’s social safety net such that it is (a) well-targeted; (b) effective in reducing current and future poverty; (c) coordinated (fewer gaps and duplications); and (d) properly monitored and evaluated. Seizing opportunities to support ambitious reforms to consolidate several conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs), the BRASA has largely focused on this aspect of the safety net (Bolsa Família), though some of the activities have taken a broader view of social protection (e.g., the work on redistribution and public transfers, and the work on the disability cash transfer program). The BRASA work has been carried out in several programmatic phases over three years. As the program comes to an end, attention is shifting towards consolidating the lessons learned from Brazil’s Bolsa Família Program for two potential audiences: (a) audiences outside Brazil, such as policy makers or practitioners in other countries; and (b) the new government Brazil which will take office in January 2007. For the former audience, the objective is to “export” lessons learned from the program’s first three years, in order to promote cross-fertilization and respond to the numerous requests that we receive for such information. For the latter audience, the objective is to take stock of where the program is, help preserve the progress that has been made over the past three years across the political transition, and, ideally, help set the agenda for further innovations in the program. Building a Social Protection System in Colombia. In FY06, the Bank completed the first phase of its social protection program with the Colombian Government. Over the period 2001-2006, the LCSHS+ team (SP team members plus education, health, poverty, social development, and M&E colleagues) developed a rich and varied portfolio to create an integrated and cohesive program to support the Government of Colombia. The Bank’s program had three objectives: (i) development of a social safety net for the poorest, (ii) institutionalization of social protection, and (iii) improving the efficiency of social spending. The first objective was met through the use of several investment operations to create a Social Safety Net (Red de Apoyo Social - RAS) including Familias en Acción (the Bank’s first CCT program) and Empleo en Acción (a public works program based on Argentina’s Trabajar) and accompanied by an extensive impact evaluation program. Since its inception in 2002, the Familias program has proven its effectiveness through impact evaluation results, which both lead the President to support the continued expansion of the program and selecting it for the cornerstone of the Extreme Poverty Program (Programa de Extrema Pobreza – PEP) that is contributing to the second phase of the Bank’s Social Protection Program for Colombia. The Social Protection team contributed to the second and third objectives through dialogue around a series of policy and research tools. The results-based three-operation Programmatic Labor and Social Structural Adjustment Loan (PLaRSSALs), and accompanying analytical work, were the platform to work with the Government in the expansion of social services by increasing efficiency and creating a more conducive policy environment for the social and labor sectors, particularly in social protection, early childhood development, health, labor, training, education, and M&E systems. The Bank team also worked with the Government to develop monitoring systems, prepare impact evaluation studies across the social sector, and improve social control, leading to the Bank’s first M&E Loan (expected Board in spring 2007). The second phase of the SP program will focus on consolidating the gains and searching for new reforms to better deliver SP services to the vulnerable. These efforts have resulted in: a strong and growing Ministry of Social Protection responsible for labor, health, and social protection sectors; creation of a national job training system to replace the antiquated public training system; implementation of three pilot labor programs and a labor law to spur job creation; increased access of informal sector workers to social protection programs and better targeting of the major programs; a culture of program evaluation and results-based management; and a library of social analysis to inform policymaking. | Home | |
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