Social Protection: Livelihoods, Coping and Assets

The poorest countries in the world tend to lack social welfare systems and support entitlements, placing large numbers of very poor people with precarious livelihoods at risk from economic and natural shocks each year. When crisis hits many poor people are forced to sell off assets such as land and livestock, and in doing so leave themselves even more vulnerable to shocks by removing an important cushion, as well as resorting to low-risk low-yield food crops. Such measures also dramatically reduce the capacity of those who survive such events to return to productive activity once the crisis has passed.

Social Protection in broad terms means all measures that help individuals, households, and communities to better manage income and other risks that create and maintain vulnerability. This includes preventive and promotive initiatives that act as ‘springboards’ out of poverty and into productive livelihoods. This is a move away from the traditional safety-nets agenda of the late 1980s and early 1990s that focused primarily on social assistance and welfare programmes.

Whose Poverty Matters? Vulnerability, Social Protection and PRSPs Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre. 2002 PDF

Countercyclical Safety Nets for the Poor and Vulnerable 2006 PDF