Social protection transfers for chronically poor people.
Abstract
900 million people will still be living on $1 per day even if the Millennium Development Goals are met. Effective social protection is vital to help chronically poor people and countries build assets, increase their capacity to withstand shocks and stresses, and thus escape from poverty; without it, they will continue to be trapped in poverty. Key elements of an effective 'social protection package' for chronically poor people are: a core of broad measures to enhance incomes, assets and security and increase access to services, and specific measures, such as nutritional support targeted at particular groups. Wider complementary policies promoting economic opportunities and political and social rights are also essential. Greater efforts are needed to integrate social protection with other anti-poverty policies; in many countries, social protection is a series of discrete programmes that are insufficiently linked to each other or to broader anti-poverty action; this is a missed opportunity to maximise poverty reduction gains. Social protection can reach more chronically poor people by investing in outreach activities, eliminating conditions that exclude the poorest and reducing the costs of accessing entitlements.
Citation
CPRC Policy Brief, No.2, Chronic Poverty Research Centre, London, UK, 6 pp.
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