Progressive social protection for the world

Social protection expenditure is around $14 Trillion (15% of global GDP at $95 trillion in 2022) whereas 53% of the global population (4.2 Billion people) do not get any social protection. Social Protection is a must for equitable development. Social protection ensures socio-political stability and thus economic growth of the country and the world. Social protection is the heart of politics as it impacts the lives of the largest population segment in a country. It ensures the vote in democracy and reduces the possibility of revolt in monarchy.

What is Social Protection?

“To provide a minimum level of health, housing, education, and food support to the families who are marginalized due to age, gender, economic condition, ethnicity, religion, color, geography, physical disability, or occupation.”

The “minimum level” is important as it will work as motivation for people to come out of the social protection net. The communities who are getting social protection support shall be encouraged to earn the social protection through livelihood. The current approach of social welfare is program centric. The planning, budgeting, and beneficiary selection are done for every welfare program in isolation. Every family is unique and therefore, every family’s social protection needs will be different and change over a period basis the family's condition.

The social protection expenditure of countries as a percentage of GDP varies from 25% to 1%. Indispensable social protection can be progressive or regressive. Progressive social protection strikes a balance between direct benefit to people to meet the emergency requirement and investment in initiative that will reduce the need for social protection for families over a period of time. Preventive health care like vaccination is progressive social protection, whereas high investment in curative health care with little or no focus on preventive health care is regressive social protection. If welfare is regressive, its need will keep on increasing year on year and will create economic disparity and unrest among people over a period of time. The purpose of progressive welfare is to make people less reliant on it. The government should transform program centric regressive welfare to family centric progressive social protection. Progressive for families and progressive for the economy.??

The error of exclusion at 53% in social protection (2020-22) means that the world needs additional $15 trillion to give social protection to all deprived families in the world. Combined with the adversities brought forth by the pandemic, it is must for the Government to be effective in the delivery of social protection without putting additional burdens on the budget. To achieve the same, the Government needs insight into the errors of inclusion as increasing the budget is not an economically feasible option.?

The reasons for Error of Exclusion and Inclusion are-

1. Lack of awareness

2. Barriers in application

3. Budget constraints & Bureaucratic/political discretion

Technology is helping solve many complex problems of the world with scale and speed. The rapid vaccination in the world demonstrates the use of technology for reaching out health social protection to the marginalized in record time with great efficiency. The Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) ensures transparency and restricts technology monopoly in delivery of very high value benefits to people. The technology monopoly in the social protection space can be very dangerous as political and economic stakes are very high for compromising the system. The world bank and other agencies have already started advocating the use of open sources for social protection to discourage technology monopolies.

As we understand, most of the global organisations including the?World?Bank?are keen that social protection systems not only deliver social assistance and insurance to the poor and vulnerable, but are also used to link them to jobs, improve productivity, invest in the health and education of their children, and protect the aging population.?EasyGov platform helps achieve the same leveraging technology.

The foundation of such holistic transformation in the social protection models in any country is dependent on the reduction of errors of inclusion, and exclusion. We have seen many technology platforms based on DPI with the capability to address this challenge. However, one needs to understand that the technology solution comprise of a deep understanding of the social, economic, and political dimensions as well as appreciation of the local realities.

Also, DPI can find errors of inclusion but It's very difficult to remove errors of inclusion because of three reasons.

1. ???Stopping a benefit may lead to loss of his/her vote. (S)he may not be more deprived but is a voter for sure.

2. ???Resistance from Local Political Leaders - Fear of losing discretion (power) in selection of beneficiary, &

3. ???Bureaucratic corruption in selection of beneficiaries.?

The COVID vaccination has proven that these errors can be reduced?by use of DPI with strong political will. DPI shall be easy to adopt for countries with lower technology maturity.?DPI shall expand to all social protection to enable progressive countries to reduce error of exclusion and inclusion. Some of examples of error of exclusion is listed in appendix.

I have invested all my global understanding and hands on experience of designing social protection models for multiple countries in building EasyGov platform. The platform aligns completely with the strategic directions of most of the global organisations, such as the SDG goals of UN, the design principles of OECD, and the engagement principles laid out in the?World?Bank’s Social Protection and Labor Strategy (2012-2022).

EasyGov platform promises seamless implementation of all such strategic objectives in shortest span of time, and thus most efficient utilization of development budgets of the order of billions of dollars.?

To achieve same, I am keen to engage as a Social Protection Expert, and willing to establish a strategic partnership at the level of EasyGov, the world’s leading GovTech startup. The partnership will ensure involvement of the leadership team comprising of the senior most leaders who have worked across the globe for digital government initiatives, and the most advanced technology platform developed to date.

The partnership will be key to drive high-impact programs with measurable outcomes. We can aim to expedite the reduction of errors of inclusion/exclusion, help countries maintain fiscal discipline, and ensure achievement of SDG goals. As we are proposing a technology enabled approach customized for regional differences, we can design the roadmaps and monitor the progress, minimizing the risk of delayed or flawed interventions.

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Amit Shukla

Founder and Managing Director of EasyGov

[email protected]

+91 9871293029

Amit has worked in Social Protection for 17 years as a founder of most successful social protection digital start-up in India and as an advisor to state & central Government in 15+ projects in India, Australia, Middle East, USA and Japan. He founded EasyGov in 2015 that have 5 successful state government project and helps over 500K people daily. He raised two rounds of funding and got EasyGov acquired by Jio Platform (Reliance subsidiary) in 2019. He is Champions of Change for Digital India. He is passionate about Social Protection, Data for Development, AI for Good and Digital Public Infrastructure.

?Appendix: Cases of errors of exclusion in social protection

·??????Based on International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates. Only one in four of the world’s children had social protection coverage, and just 18.6 percent of unemployed people received unemployment benefits.

·??????Jordan expanded its cash transfer program to?reach 240,000 households?in 2021, but that left millions of people without support when poverty is estimated to have?spiked?from 15 percent to as much as 24 percent of the population of roughly 10 million in a matter of months. The country’s large refugee population, most of whom live in poverty, is not covered, but has to rely on aid agencies.?

·??????Kenya implemented a Covid-19 cash transfer program that targeted just 21 of Kenya’s 47 counties. Human Rights Watch?research?found it reached only a tiny fraction of the targeted populations and left millions of people in Nairobi county’s informal settlements with no support despite dire need.

·??????ILO figures show that only?26.4 percent of children?globally receive social protection benefits. This confirms Human Rights Watch research that found that Covid-19 relief programs often reached only a fraction of households needing support.

·??????Lebanon’s?social protection system?excludes many people?because of their work status, class, gender, citizenship, ethnicity, and other social characteristics such as disability or age. The two largest social protection programs in the country are World Bank financed: the?National Poverty Targeting Programme?(NPTP) and the?Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN). In 2016, Oxfam and the American University in Beirut found that the National Poverty program was?ineffective?and did not reach many in need. As of March 2021, only 1.5 percent of the population had access to the program. The emergency program was rolled out in March 2022, with the aim of reaching?27 percent?of the population.

·??????Pensions for older people are the most widespread form of social protection in the world, with?77.5 percent of people?above retirement age receiving some form of old-age pension, according to the ILO. However, many people, particularly informal workers, are left out of pension programs.?

·??????Nigeria’s?pension scheme is open to employees in the formal and informal sectors, but enrolment is only?about 40 percent?nationally, according to a?World Bank report?published in 2019. The report also notes that long-term underinvestment in social protection meant that, prior to the pandemic, only 4 percent of the poorest 40 percent of households had access to any form of social safety net.

·??????A July 2021?Human Rights Watch analysis?of government household surveys revealed that in May, August, and November 2020, as the pandemic raged, no more than 15 percent of Nigerian households nationwide received cash transfers or food assistance even though almost 50 percent of households surveyed at the same intervals had run out of food in the previous 30 days.?

·??????In the?United States, federal Covid-19 relief and social protection programs generally excluded?informal workers?like street vendors and undocumented immigrants. Some states and cities attempted to fill the coverage gap. New York State created a US$2.1 billion?Excluded Workers Fund?in October 2021 to help those without access to federal support for joblessness, such as for back rent and medical bills. But demand for relief was high and the fund?depleted quickly, leaving tens of thousands of people without support.?

·??????In?Kazakhstan, informal sector workers, 30 percent of the workforce, were eligible for temporary state aid early in the pandemic. However, they had to pay a non-refundable social security contribution to get the aid. The?payments?of 1,325 Kazakhstani Tenge or KZT (approximately $3) in rural areas and KZT 2,650 (approximately $6) in urban areas could have been a barrier to benefits, given that many informal workers earn incomes below the poverty line.

·??????In?Nepal, an evaluation of cash transfer pilot programs found that the targeting process took up?22 percent?of the project’s total costs. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF)?estimates?that the targeting methods used – based on caste and a simple proxy means test – excluded more than two-thirds of eligible children living in poverty from the program.?

·??????At the onset of the pandemic, in April 2020, the?Ugandan?government initiated an emergency program targeting 1.4 million people in Kampala and Wakiso districts for food assistance. The initiative was?criticized?for targeting districts with some of the lowest poverty rates in the country – 3 percent, compared with much higher rates in the subregions of Karamoja at 61 percent, Bukedi at 48 percent, and Busoga at 42 percent.?

·??????Exclusion errors for social protection programmes targeting the poorest 25 per cent of their intended category or less.