Overview
Global policymakers confront urgent challenges to enhance the lives of 700 million people in extreme poverty and tackle issues like climate change, fragility, and gender empowerment. Additionally, over the next decade, 1.1 billion young individuals in low and middle-income nations will enter the workforce. Social Protection and Labor (SPL) policies are vital for hastening poverty reduction, reducing food insecurity, improving employment prospects, and advancing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Themes
Development Impact’s Social Protection and Skills for Jobs program aims to identify the most impactful and scalable policies to address these global challenges. It spans the most common Social Protection and Labor policies and instruments across four inter-linked areas:
Safety Nets
The Development Impact Group conducts original policy research and compiles evidence summaries on the most common safety net programs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). For instance, evidence show that cash transfer programs spark lasting gains in consumption and food security—even in times of crises. Public works boost short-term employment and empower women, but gains tend to fade in the medium run. Development Impact Group’s studies also explore pension reforms and fiscal equity.
Adaptive Social Protection and Climate Resilience
The Development Impact Group studies how to increase household resilience before climatic shocks, including in fragile settings. Research shows that interventions that promote livelihood diversification or land recuperation to raise agricultural productivity can help households mitigate the effects of future climatic shocks. The Development Impact group has also analyzed how to optimize response to shocks. Anticipatory action for floods in Nepal or shock-responsive cash transfers for drought in Niger have led to faster impacts on food security compared to regular post-disaster assistance after climatic shocks.
Multifaceted Economic Inclusion Programs
The Development Impact Group analyzes how multifaceted economic inclusion (or graduation) programs designed to address multiple constraints improve poor households’ livelihoods, income, food security, resilience and women’s empowerment. Findings from Afghanistan, Niger, or the Sahel show that economic inclusion programs are high-return investments and induce sustained impacts, including when delivered through government systems and across rural, urban, and fragile settings. The Development Impact Group is assessing how to effectively scale these programs through an impact collaborative with the Partnership for Economic Inclusion.
Skills for Jobs
The Development Impact Group examines how skills training can improve youth employment prospects, by building both technical and behavioral skills, as well as trade-specific or cross-cutting skills (such as digital skills). A particular focus is on skills training that target young people—whether out-of-school or graduates—and seek to expand opportunities across formal wage jobs, entrepreneurship or self-owned micro-enterprises. On-the-job training in firms through internships or apprenticeships complement classroom training and other measures to promote matching or intermediation and create pathways for youth, women, or disadvantaged groups. For instance, completed and ongoing work shows that dual apprenticeships are attractive for youths and help firms fill open positions, and they induce medium to long-term impacts on youth earnings. Integrated approaches that combine soft skills with hard skills can deliver lasting impacts on employment outcomes.
Partnerships
The Development Impact Group works in close collaboration with the World Bank Social Protection and Labor Global Practice (GP), including on key initiatives such as the Partnership for Economic Inclusion (PEI), the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) Program, the Solutions for Youth Employment platform, the World Food Programme (WFP), government counterparts, and a wide variety of technical partners. We also leverage cross-sectoral synergies with other Development Impact Goup programs on gender, fragility (crime, conflict, and violence), education, private sector development, and agriculture, in collaboration with partner GPs.
