Discussion Papers - General

Climate-Responsive Social Protection (1.4mb pdf)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 1210; Publication Date: 03/12
by Anne T. Kuriakose, Rasmus Heltberg, William Wiseman, Cecilia Costella, Rachel Cipryk and Sabine Cornelius

In the years ahead, development efforts aiming at reducing vulnerability will increasingly have to factor in climate change, and social protection is no exception. This paper sets out the case for climate-responsive social protection and proposes a framework with principles, design features, and functions that would help SP systems evolve in a climate-responsive direction.

Social Protection in Low Income Countries and Fragile Situations: Challenges and Future Directions (1.2mb pdf)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 1209; Publication Date: 03/12
by Colin Andrews, Maitreyi Das, John Elder, Mirey Ovadiya and Giuseppe Zampaglione 

Demand for social protection is growing in low income countries and fragile situations. In recent years, the success of social protection (SP) interventions in middle income countries (MICs) like Brazil and Mexico, along with the series of food, fuel, and financial crises, has prompted policymakers in low income countries (LICs) and fragile situations (FSs) to examine the possibility of introducing such programs in their own countries. Flagship programs in countries as diverse as Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, and Rwanda have shown the adaptability of social protection interventions to the LIC context. Yet, despite growing levels of support for these initiatives, many challenges remain. In LICs and FSs, governments are confronted with a nexus of mutually reinforcing deficits that increase the need for SP programs and simultaneously reduce their ability to successfully respond. Governments face hard choices about the type, affordability, and sustainability of SP interventions. The paper reviews how these factors affect SP programs in these countries and identifies ways to address the deficits.

Crisis Response in Social Protection (1.1mb pdf)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 1205; Publication Date: 03/12
by Federica Marzo and Hideki Mori

The main goal of this paper is to draw lessons from the past to better understand the role and potential of social protection in response to crisis, and support the definition of the World Bank Social Protection and Labor Strategy 2012–2022. This paper uses selected crises (1990-present), their social impact, and government responses to evaluate the social protection instruments deployed and provide lessons learned and possible directions for the future, including questions for further analytical work.

Building Social Protection and Labor Systems: Concepts and Operational Implications (729kb pdf)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 1202; Publication Date: 03/12
by David A. Robalino, Laura Rawlings and Ian Walker

This paper presents a framework for designing and implementing social protection and labor (SP&L) systems in middle and low income countries. Although the term “system” is used to describe a country’s set of social protection programs, these tend to operate independently with little or no coordination even when they have the same policy objective and target similar population groups. The paper argues that enhancing coordination across SP&L policies, programs, and administrative tools has the potential to enhance both individual program performance as well as the overall provision of social protection across programs.

Bringing Financial Literacy and Education to Low and Middle Income Countries: The Need to Review, Adjust, and Extend Current Wisdom (300kb pdf)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 1007; Publication Date: 07/10
by Robert Holzmann

This paper presents a World Bank led and Russia trust fund financed work program to measure financial capability and the effectiveness of financial education in low and middle income countries. The two activities and their staging have been motivated by the lessons of high-income countries with financial literacy programs and the deviating characteristics of low and middle income countries. While progress has been made in high-income countries to measure financial capability, there is little robust empirical evidence that financial education can improve it.  While applying the financial capability concept in low and middle-income countries looks promising it will need to be adjusted to their characteristic and supported by innovative interventions and rigorous impact evaluation to improve it.

Poverty Traps and Social Protection (456kb pdf)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 0804; Publication Date: 02/08
by Christopher B. Barrett, Michael R. Carter and Munenobu Ikegami

This paper demonstrates that there are potentially large returns to social protection policy that stakes out a productive safety net below the vulnerable and keeps them from slipping into a poverty trap. Much of the value of the productive safety net comes from mitigating the ex ante effects of risk and crowding in additional investment. The analysis also explores the implications of different mechanisms of targeting social protection transfers. In the presence of poverty traps, modestly regressive targeting based on critical asset thresholds may have better long-run poverty reduction effects than traditional needs-based targeting.

Household’s Vulnerability to Shocks in Zambia (282kb pdf)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 0536; Publication Date: 09/05
by Carlo del Ninno and Alessandra Marini

Zambia is a county characterized by a high incidence of poverty and exposure to several types of shocks like HIV/AIDS, macroeconomic instability and periodic droughts.  In this paper the authors conduct an in depth analysis of the incidence and impact of those shocks on poverty. The analysis of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, carried out using the data on the occurrence of the death of an adult in the previous 12 months and the existence of foster children, shows the existence of a general decrease in consumption with the exception of non poor rural families.  The deterioration of the economic situation and the related high level of unemployment resulted in a lower level of economic well-being.  Finally, the analysis of the impact of the drought shows that while a significant percentage (17 percent) of the poorest households in rural areas would experience significant losses in maize production (covering 8 percent of all the households), they are concentrated in a few communities in Southern, Central and Western provinces.

Measuring Risk Perceptions: Why and How (187kb pdf)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 0533; Publication Date: 07/05
by Joachim De Weerdt

Economists study data on choices that people make and from this deduce people’s preferences and expectations. This identification process, as well as the predictions based on it, becomes flawed when multiple sets of preferences and expectations are consistent with the same data. One way forward would be to measure directly people’s expectations on future states of the world. This paper discusses the theoretical merits and practical constraints of doing so. Data on risk perceptions seem particularly relevant for understanding savings and investment behaviour in the developing world, where risk is pervasive and often posited to have significant costs. Although the main aim of the paper is thinking through the ‘whys’ and the ‘hows’ of measuring risk perception, some interesting, but still unrepresentative findings from the field are presented. For example, the authors uncover a puzzle in that respondents seem to be engaged in farming activities that are stochastically dominated by other farming activities. Furthermore the authors find evidence that suggests that for high-profile activities, like owning a shop, the heuristic of availability makes people without experience in the activity bias their distributions to the right compared to people with experience.

Challenges and Opportunities of International Migration for the EU, Its Member States, Neighboring Countries and Regions: A Policy Note (534Kb PDF)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 0411; Publication Date: 06/04
by Robert Holzmann and Rainer Münz

The paper aims at identifying key challenges and opportunities, including win-win solutions that would allow sending and receiving countries in and around Europe to benefit most from geographic mobility of people. The paper (i) highlights demographic, economic and political gaps explaining international migration; (ii) explores the main options for the EU member states and reviews the experiences of traditional countries of immigration; (iii) investigates the implications of a pro-active recruitment approach, including the impacts on both sending and receiving countries; and (iv) sketches the institutional requirements and necessary changes to move toward win-win solutions, identifying areas of potential cooperation between sending and receiving countries. The paper concludes with a short summary and an outlook on open data and research questions.

Migration from the Russian North During the Transition Period (207KB PDF)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 9925 ; Publication Date: 09/99
by Timothy Heleniak

This study begins with a conceptual comparison between the Northern development strategy that existed during Soviet period and that which is evolving under market conditions in Russia. This is followed by a comparison between the Russian North and other Northern regions elsewhere in the world. The major section of study examines patterns of migration in the Russian North during the transition period beginning with a brief history of the settlement of the Russian North, with an emphasis on the Northern development strategy that existed during the Soviet period. Data are presented showing the composition of the Northern population prior to transition. A description is then presented of the levels, direction, age-sex composition, educational, occupational characteristics, and mechanisms of Northern migration trends. Analysis of is then done of Northern migration trends according to migration theory in order to determine the causes of this mass migration. The final section attempts to determine the possible future levels of migration from the North that can be expected.

A Social Protection Strategy for Togo (127KB PDF)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 9920; Publication Date: 07/99
by Regina Bendokat and Maurizia Tovo

In many ways, social protection is a new field. What is new is not the social protection activities themselves, but the way we think about them. Since independence, the Togolese Government has offered some form of social security, to a privileged minority working in the formal sector, and social assistance to a few people or groups conventionally identified as vulnerable (widows, orphans, handicapped). Social protection includes social security and social assistance, but goes beyond it. The objectives of this paper are:

• to use the conceptual framework of the social protection strategy to help broaden thinking on social protection in Togo;
• to test a participatory approach to strategy formulation that includes inputs from a wide range of stakeholders;
• to contribute to the development of a social protection strategy for Togo that balances the need for additional information with the urgency for concrete actions;
• to identify ways in which the World Bank can support social protection in Togo in a manner consistent with the Country Assistance Strategy, keeping in mind that social protection involves interventions in several sectors.

The Role of NPOs in Policies to Combat Social Exclusion (83KB PDF)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 9912; Publication Date: 06/99
by Christoph Badelt

This paper reports on a pilot study on NGOs and social exclusion. The purpose of the study is to present the main topics to be investigated by the Bank in the future, if policies to reduce social exclusion relied more on NGOs than they do at present. Section I gives an overview of the different concepts and dimensions of social exclusion. Section II reviews the definitions and various forms of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) which may be of relevance for the Bank's policies. Section III discusses the role NPOs may actually play in a strategy to fight social exclusion, while Section IV suggests some policy implications.

Russia's Social Protection Malaise: Key Reform Policies as a Response to the Present Crisis (183KB PDF)
Social Protection Discussion Paper No. 9909; Publication Date: 04/99
edited by Michal Rutkowski

This report focuses on changes in the social protection system to lessen the social impact of the economic crisis that confronts the Russian Federation today. The report is not comprehensive and covers exclusively the crisis-related issues. It addresses the key challenges of (i) coping with income decline and increasing poverty, (ii) offsetting the consequences of reduced public expenditure in the social sectors, (iii) targeting and delivering social assistance and benefits, and (iv) improving the functioning of labor markets. It also deals with selected aspects of emergency assistance. Finally, it identifies possible areas for Bank support.

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