The World Bank In Social Protection

The COVID-19 pandemic proved to be a major catalyst for increasing the global focus on social protection. Over the course of 2020-2021, countries across the globe implemented close to 4,000 social protection measures to respond to its economic impact. Cash transfers alone reached around 1.4 billion people or one out of six people in the world. 

As described in the 2022 Social Protection and Jobs Compass, countries need to build Universal Social Protection systems. Shocks are likely to become more prevalent as longer-term global trends like the evolving nature of work, demographic change, climate change, and conflict and fragility reshape economies and societies.

BUILD

Social protection systems are at the heart of boosting human capital and empowering people. They help individuals and families, especially the poor and vulnerable, cope with crises and shocks, find jobs, improve productivity, invest in the health and education of their children, and protect the aging population.

Social protection systems that are well-designed can have powerful impacts of the long-term, by reducing inequalities, building resilience and ending the inter-generational cycle of poverty. Such systems and tools are transformative as they help mitigate economic and fiscal shocks and provide opportunity by giving people a chance to get out of poverty and become productive members of society. Well-designed social protection programs are cost-effective, costing countries on average about 1.5% of GDP.

PROTECT

Many countries have embraced social protection instruments such as safety net programs to harness human capital. Apart from providing struggling families with supplemental income, social safety nets also increase access to information and services, improve productivity, protect the elderly, and support people while they look for work.

The rapidly changing nature of work in countries at all income levels requires a dramatically new approach to social protection and labor policy, according to the report “Protecting All: Risk-Sharing for a Diverse and Diversifying World of Work”. It proposes an approach to worker protection and social security that is better adapted to an increasingly diverse and fluid world of work. These ideas are explored even more fully in the 2022 strategy update, “Charting a Course Towards Universal Social Protection: Resilience, Equity, and Opportunity for All”

EMPLOY

The world’s working-age population will increase by about 700 million people between 2019 and 2035. This means that an additional 470 million people will be seeking work. The disruptive impact of the COVID-19 crisis on workers, labor markets, and livelihoods has further underlined the importance of the jobs agenda.  

Preparing for the jobs of tomorrow, while making critical human capital investments today is a priority for achieving economic transformation in the poorest countries. As part of the Human Capital Project, the World Bank is supporting governments to equip the next generation of workers with the skills needed to tackle the types of jobs which the changing world of work will require. This also requires enabling workers to move from lower- to higher-productivity activities—led by a vibrant private sector and supported by public policy actions. 

UNIVERSAL SOCIAL PROTECTION

The World Bank has a vision for universal social protection to ensure that all people have the support they need and that no individuals or groups are left behind. It is the cornerstone of inclusive social policy. 

Together with universal social protection programs, targeted interventions play a valuable role in helping achieve universal protection. A recent report “Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance: A New Look at Old Dilemmas” provides a comprehensive analysis of the benefits and costs of social protection targeting as well as the pros and cons of various targeting methods based on global experience in over 130 countries.

While achievements in designing and promoting the adoption of social assistance programs and delivery systems have been made, investing heavily in initiatives to improve jobs and earnings opportunities, and the expansion of social insurance programs are equally important.

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Last Updated: Apr 03, 2023

We support three key goals of an effective social protection and jobs system through the lifecycle, including:

• Equity: Reducing poverty and inequality, promoting equality of opportunity, and addressing exclusion, especially for women and girls. 
• Opportunity: Investing in human capacity and food and nutrition, improving access to productive work, building skills for work and life, and facilitating the transition from school to work.
• Resilience: Providing protection and insurance against shocks and building the capacity to manage them, including against natural disasters, pandemics, climate change, economic and financial crises, conflict or forced displacement. Expanding social insurance, pensions, and unemployment insurance to support those living with disabilities and for all households into old age.

In 2022, the World Bank launched a social protection & jobs (SPJ) strategy update focused on “Charting a Course Towards Universal Social Protection”, also known as the SPJ Compass. It builds on the 10-year social protection and labor strategy (2012-2022) which laid out ways to deepen World Bank Group’s involvement, capacity, knowledge, and impact in delivering social protection programs.

The SPJ Compass puts at its heart the vision of universal social protection (USP). It recognizes that the progressive realization of USP, which ensures access to social protection for all whenever and however they need it, is critical for effectively reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity. Countries across the globe are increasingly using this vision to guide their policy.

The Global Partnership for Universal Social Protection (USP2030) is under the co-leadership of the World Bank and the International Labour Organization. USP2030 partners work together to increase the number of countries that provide USP by supporting governments in designing and implementing universal and sustainable social protection systems.

Last Updated: Apr 03, 2023

Across the Western and Central Africa region, close to 50 million people benefit directly from the Bank’s COVID-19 social protection and jobs interventions. This includes scaling up Niger’s Wadata Talaka social safety net program; social safety net support to more than 200,000 people in Mauritania and emergency cash transfers to 230,000 households in the Republic of Congo.

In Brazil, the World Bank helped strengthen the country’s conditional cash transfer program, the Bolsa Família Program (BFP), and its main delivery system, the Cadastro Único. Estimates show that social transfers, including both Bolsa Família and Social Pensions (Benefício de Prestação Continuada, BPC), accounted for a 58% decline in extreme poverty, a 30% decline in poverty, and a 41% fall in inequality between 2004 and 2014. BFP increased its coverage and improved its monitoring, reaching 47 million people—its highest number of beneficiaries to that date. Furthermore, by the end of the project, all states harmonized their own cash transfers with Bolsa Família.

In Ethiopia, the Urban Productive Safety Net Project (UPSNP) made progress toward ensuring inclusive development outcomes for the country’s urban poor, reaching more than 600,000 beneficiaries of whom 60% are women. The project enabled beneficiaries to open bank accounts for the first time, resulting in more than $11.3 million in savings. Livelihood grants helped more than 50,000 people complete skills and financial literacy training to help them start small businesses and support their self-employment - one of the main pathways out of poverty. 

More than 60,000 people were linked to social services such as health insurance, education and housing support. More than 45 non-governmental organizations are providing services for the economic and social integration of people living in street situations. Neighborhood quality was improved through public works and promotion of urban agriculture. The project helped Ethiopia to develop the first management information system to capture data related to both urban and rural poor, which will serve as the overall monitoring system for safety nets in the country.

Last Updated: Apr 03, 2023

The World Bank Group and the International Labour Organization (ILO) work together to achieve social protection for all. The partnership is expanding social protection measures worldwide as part of a global effort to combat poverty and rising income inequality.

The World Bank receives support from the governments of Australia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, GHR Foundation and UBS Optimus Foundation through the Rapid Social Response Adaptive and Dynamic Social Protection (RSR-ADSP) Umbrella Program. The program provides catalytic resources to help low-income countries build social protection and labor systems, so that they are prepared for future crises.  To date, the RSR program has provided $141 million for more than 380 activities in more than 100 countries worldwide.

Housed at the World Bank, the Partnership on Economic Inclusion (PEI) seeks to help increase the income and assets of extremely poor and vulnerable people by developing economic inclusion programs globally and contributing to evidence-based good practices that can be adapted to local conditions by governments and local or international agencies.

KNOMAD, the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development, is a brain trust for the global migration community. It is an open, inclusive, multidisciplinary knowledge partnership that draws on experts to create and synthesize knowledge for use by policy makers in sending, receiving and transit countries. 

The Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (SASPP) supports the strengthening of adaptive social protection systems in six Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal), and currently covers more than 2.3 million people.  The program enables individuals, households, and societies to build resilience and better withstand the impacts of shocks that regularly afflict the sub-region, including those triggered by climate change (drought and floods), conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic.

To strengthen countries’ social protection systems, the World Bank together with development partners launched the Inter-Agency Social Protection Assessments (ISPA). ISPA is a set of tools that help countries develop standardized delivery mechanisms in designing social protection systems, allowing for the effective and coordinated delivery of social protection programs to beneficiaries.

Last Updated: Apr 03, 2023