Handbook on Social Protection Systems

Part I on Instruments elaborates on five key social protection instruments: social transfers, social insurance, LMPs, social services and micro-insurance. The respective chapters discuss the concepts, the place of the instrument in the social protection system, the most important design parameters, the key take-aways in terms of evidence as well as the main challenges.

Part II on System design discusses different parameters that are not exclusively decided at intervention level but also have to be determined at systems level. At the systems level, different priorities can be set when it comes to the financing mix, the main target group, the role of human rights standards as well as the mix of actors. Part II outlines different options to answer these questions, discusses their advantages and drawbacks and cumulates in a final chapter that outlines different systems’ approaches that can be taken to social protection.

Part III on Policy coordination deals with the important question in what ways and with what kind of other policies social protection needs to be harmonised. Not only is it important to ensure that similar instruments are harmonised with one other but also that instruments are coordinated across different instrument groups to generate synergies, optimise effects and avoid duplications and disincentives. It is equally crucial to ensure policy coherence with other fields such as taxation and humanitarian policies. In this way, effects are not undone and build on each other. Part III finishes by introducing social budgeting as an important tool to coordinate social protection instruments through the allocation of funds to them.

Part IV on Groups in focus highlights the specific social protection needs of different groups in society that cannot be easily reached with a standardised toolbox. Part IV highlights how a social protection system needs to be designed so that it is inclusive of gender and disability aspects, pays attention to children as well as the elderly and also reaches out to groups that easily fall off the social protection radar such as the informal sector or refugees. Part IV not only specifies for each group different policy options and their respective implications but also attunes the reader to more implicit forms of discrimination.

Part V on Administration spells out the delivery mechanisms and related debates of the two main social protection instruments, social transfers and social insurance, and then raises questions at systems level with respect to integrated data management, the portability of claims across systems within and across countries as well as decentralisation.

Part VI on Political economy highlights that social protection planning is not a purely technocratic matter but a political process where decisions are influenced not only by rational considerations but also powerful stakeholders. Part VI discusses in particular in what way international actors have shaped the social protection systems of LICs and MICs and looks into the role of public preferences in social protection design. Next to this, it identifies other factors that have led to the adoption of social protection and have favoured reform processes.

Part VII on Effects provides an overview of the databases and analytical methods used to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of social protection systems, while also zooming in on the evidence that exists so far on the effects of different social protection interventions on key outcome areas: poverty and inequality, food consumption and nutrition, health, economic development as well as social cohesion and nation building.

Part VIII on Major challenges and reform options closes the handbook by discussing the main future challenges for social protection systems and deliberating how these could best respond to the challenges. While demographic change, globalisation and the future of work have been well identified as relevant factors in this regard, climate change and pandemics such as COVID-19 have more recently become an item on the reform agenda of social protection systems.