Introduction

Social protection, as defined by the United Nations

Research Institute For Social Development, is concerned
with preventing, managing, and overcoming situations
that adversely affect peoples well being. Social
protection consists of policies and programs designed to
reduce poverty and vulnerability by promoting
efficient labour markets, diminishing people's exposure to
risks, and enhancing their capacity to manage economic
and social risks, such as unemployment, exclusion,
sickness, disability and old age.
Most common types of social protection:

Labor market interventions are policies and

programs designed to promote employment, the
efficient operation of labor markets and the protection
of workers.

Social Insurance mitigates risks associated with

unemployment, ill health, disability, work-related injury
and old age, such as health insurance or
unemployment insurance.

Social Assistance is when resources, either cash or

in-kind, are transferred to vulnerable individuals or
households with no other means of adequate support,
including single parents, the homeless, or the
physically or mentally challenged.

Unemployment protection schemes provide income

support over a determined period of time to unemployed
people who are capable of working. Their objective is to
provide at least partial income replacement for the loss of
earnings resulting from temporary unemployment,
enabling the beneficiary to maintain a certain standard of
living during the transition period until he or she obtains
suitable employment and, increasingly, also to provide
support in finding employment through a range of
promotional measures and services, including support,
counselling and advice in looking for employment, and
facilities for enhancing, updating and developing skills.
In normal times, such schemes aim to meet the needs
of individuals whose job losses reflect basic levels of
turnover in the labour market, and thus to play a key role
in supporting job mobility and facilitating structural
change in the economy. In addition to guaranteeing
income security for unemployed workers, unemployment
protection schemes can also help protect them from
slipping into informality, and support their search for new
jobs in which they can apply existing or new skills in a
productive way.
Whether temporary unemployment is the result of
covariant shocks, as in the event of the global crisis, or of
the constant structural change undergone by economies
and labour markets, unemployment benefits represent an

effective tool to guarantee income security to individuals,

smooth economic changes and stabilize aggregate
consumption.
Most unemployment benefit programmes are designed to
cover workers in formal employment who lose their jobs
and find themselves temporarily unable to obtain
suitable new employment. Most such programmes do not
protect unemployed people who have had no formal
employment in the recent past, the long-term
unemployed, the underemployed or the working poor.
In countries with high levels of informality, wider noncontributory social assistance programmes combining
employment and social protection policies have been
developed to provide some income security for
unemployed and underemployed workers. These include
employment guarantee schemes and other public
employment programmes, as well as programmes that
combine cash transfers with support for skills
development and creation of employment and
entrepreneurship opportunities.

The Content
Traditionally, social protection has been used in
the European welfare state and other parts of the
developed world to maintain a certain living standard,
and address transient poverty. One of the first examples
of state-provided social protection can be tracked to the
Roman Emperor Trajan, who expanded a program for free
grain to include more poor citizens of the empire. In
addition, he instituted public funds to support poor

children. Organized welfare was not common until the

late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was during this
period that in both Germany and Great Britain, welfare
systems were established to target the working classes
(see National Insurance).[5] The United States followed
several years later, during the Great Depression, with
emergency relief for those struck the hardest. However,
modern social protection has grown to envelop a much
broader range of issues and purposes; it is now being
used as a policy approach in developing nations, to
address issues of persistent poverty and target structural
causes. Moreover, it is designed to lift recipients out of
poverty, rather than exclusively providing passive
protection against contingencies . social protection has
rapidly been used in trying to reduce and ultimately
eliminate poverty and suffering in developing countries
(mostly in Africa), so to enhance and promote economic
and social growth.
Social insurance schemes are contributory programs that
protect beneficiaries from catastrophic expenses in
exchange for regular payments of premiums. Health costs
can be very high, so health insurance schemes are a
popular way reducing risk in the event of shock.
[15]
However, an individual with low income may not be
able to afford insurance. Some argue that insurance
schemes should be complemented with social assistance.
Community-based health insurance allows pooling in
settings where institutional capacity is too weak to
organize nationwide risk-pooling, especially in low-income
countries, making insurance more affordable. In risk-

sharing schemes, the insurance premium is unrelated to

the likelihood that the beneficiary will fall ill and benefits
are provided on the basis of need.
Social assistance schemes comprise programs designed
to help the most vulnerable individuals ( i.e., those with
no other means of support such as single parent
households, victims of natural disasters or civil conflict,
handicapped people, or the destitute poor), households
and communities to meet a Social floor and improve
living standards. These programs consist of all forms of
public action, government and non-government, that are
designed to transfer resources, either cash or in-kind (e.g.
food transfers), to eligible vulnerable and deprived
persons.[17] Social assistance interventions may include:

Welfare and social services to highly vulnerable

groups such as the physically or mentally disabled,
orphans, or substance abusers.

Cash or in-kind transfers such as food stamps and

family allowances.

Temporary subsidies such as life-line tariffs,

housing subsidies, or support of lower prices of staple
food in times of crisis

Social protection is an expensive and difficult endeavor,

by any means; the question remains how best to
implement programs that effectively aid the people who
need it the most. Currently, there are a number of

mechanisms that provide social protection in various

nations. These policies and instruments vary according to
country context. In some nations, governments are
strongly involved in the provision of social protection,
following a developmentalism model, in which social
protection is seen as a tool to promote economic growth.
There are also nations which are characterized
by dualism, in which there is state-provided protection for
those who work in the formal sector, but little to no
protection for those who work in the informal sector.
Finally, there are nations in which the economy is largely
agrarian, and a great majority of the population works in
the informal economy. In those countries that have only
residual social protection coverage and weak state
capacity,social protection is mainly provided by nongovernmental means such as kin, NGOs, and individual
philanthropic donations.

International donors and organizations have influenced

social protection approaches both at the level of policy
discourse and program design and implementation. Even
though The World Bank and International Labor
Organization (ILO) are the major donors and the lead
organizations in the field, other organizations are also
concerned with social protection.
The World Bank is a source of financial and technical
assistance for developing countries. In order to identify
social risks and potential responses, The World Bank
developed a tool called Social Risk Management (SRM).
The SRM framework includes interventions that focus on

managing risks before shocks occur. It is based on two

assessments: (1) the poor are most exposed to diverse
risks, and (2) the poor have the fewest tools to deal with
these risks. The main elements of the SRM framework
are:

Risk reduction measures that focus on reducing risks

in the labor market.

Risk mitigation measures to deal with anticipated

shock.

Risk coping mechanisms to relieve the impact of risk

after its occurred.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development (OECD) brings 30 democratic countries
together to seek answers to common problems and
coordinate domestic and international policies.
The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the
OECD is responsible for the Poverty Network (POVNET)
that has become very influential on policy development.
The DAC-POVNET focuses on the following areas:

Poverty reduction

Pro-poor growth

People centered development

Decent work

The International Labor Organization, which covers both

issues of social security and labor protection, has been
the United Nations agency responsible for setting norms
and standards at work. Currently the ILO focuses,
amongst others, on the following strategies:

Extending social protection to all

Promoting decent working conditions

Providing programs for informal and migrant workers

Moldova: Poverty Assessment & Social Security

Moldova is having an arduous transition from

being a centrally-planned economy to one that
is guided by market signals, and this has
contributed to poverty. Its agriculture-dominated
economy, once thriving, is handicapped today by the
loss of its traditional markets and the slow
restructuring of its enterprises. As a result, the
economy has been shrinking since independence. And,
with it, enterprise-based employment and social
support structures have eroded as well. This has had
two effects on povertycash incomes have been
lower, due to a stagnant overall labor market, and
non-cash transfers and implicit subsidies from
enterprises and the Government have been
decreasing in Moldova.[1] Poverty, therefore, is
significant. Using an absolute poverty line for Moldova
of 82.10 lei per person per month (about $220 a year
at market exchange rates) in May 1997, 35 percent of
Moldovans were poor. Using a relative poverty line (of

40 percent of average consumption) in the same

period, 19 percent of the population were "relatively"
poor.
The regional crisis in 1998, which helped bring
about a sharp decline in Moldova's GDP, has
made poverty even greater. Absolute poverty has
worsened significantly. Using the same absolute
poverty line as in May 1997, 46 percent of Moldovans
were poor in the fourth quarter of 1998. In particular,
comparing the third and fourth quarters in 1997 to
those in 1998, the number of people whose
consumption was less than the absolute poverty line
have increased sharply
The increase in poverty has been against the
backdrop of an increase in inequality. In 1987-88,
the Gini coefficient for income inequality was 24
(where zero reflects perfect equality and 100 total
inequality). By 1992, it had risen to 34.4 and in 1993,
it was 36. The 1997 household survey data finds the
Gini for consumption to be about 40, with the richest
20 percent of the population consuming about 4,300
lei ($925) a year, almost half of total consumption in
the economy. In urban areas, the gap was larger, with
the richest 20 percent consuming about 60 percent of
the total, and the poorest fifth consuming around 3
percent of all consumption. While inequality has
worsened, it is still no worse than that in countries
such as the Philippines (a Gini of 42.9 in 1994) or
Malaysia (a Gini of 48.4 in 1989), and is comparable to
those of many countries at Moldova's level of per
capita income. It is also comparable to the levels in
the region. For example, Georgia, in end-1997, had a
Gini of 0.38 for total household consumption.

This pattern of the distribution of consumption

has remained relatively unaffected by the onset
of the regional crisis, which, while lowering
absolute incomes, has generally preserved the
distribution while improving it slightly in urban areas
(Figure II). While the absolute level of consumption is
still meager by international standards, it was ten
times the average consumption of the poorest fifth of
the population.

Conclusions
There are two main schools of thought concerning
scope of social protection. Universalism argues that
each person, by merit of simply being a citizen should
be entitled to benefits from social protection
programs. Such a policy would avoid meanstesting and any conditionalities such as work
requirements. One of the greatest benefits to this
policy perspective is social solidarity, since everyone
contributes collaboratively to a system that everyone

also benefits from. Social security is one such

example. Moreover, economists have argued that
universalism is an investment in human capital that
aids the development of a nation as a
whole. Opponents would argue that universalism is
cost-ineffective and unfairly distorts individual efforts.
Such an argument points toward targeting as a better
solution. In such a case, the question arises of who
should be the target population that receives benefits
from social programs.

Targeting income vs. capabilities

Net income is the simplest method of determining a

needy population. Some states use a Guaranteed
Minimum Income system, in which all members of a
state receive sufficient income to live on, so long as
they meet certain conditions. However, proponents of
the capabilities approach argue that income is easier
to misrepresent, and moreover, fails to target the root
causal factors of poverty. Hence, they recommend
targeting a minimum level of basic capabilities that
will impact quality of life, such as institutional
improvements like health and education. Policy
examples might include a social floor.

Means of provision

Social protection is an expensive and difficult

endeavor, by any means; the question remains how
best to implement programs that effectively aid the

people who need it the most. Currently, there are a

number of mechanisms that provide social protection
in various nations. These policies and instruments vary
according to country context. In some nations,
governments are strongly involved in the provision of
social protection, following a developmentalism model,
in which social protection is seen as a tool to promote
economic growth. There are also nations which are
characterized by dualism, in which there is stateprovided protection for those who work in the formal
sector, but little to no protection for those who work in
the informal sector. Finally, there are nations in which
the economy is largely agrarian, and a great majority
of the population works in the informal economy. In
those countries that have only residual social
protection coverage and weak state capacity,social
protection is mainly provided by non-governmental
means such as kin, NGOs, and individual philanthropic
donations.

References
1. United Nations Research Institute for Social
Development (UNRISD). 2010.

Combating Poverty and Inequality: Structural

Change, Social Policy and Politics.
2. World Bank. 2001. Social Protection Sector Strategy
Paper: From Safety Net to Springboard. Washington
DC, USA.
3. United Nations Research Institute for Social
Development (UNRISD). 2010. Combating Poverty
and Inequality: Structural Change, Social Policy and
Politics.
4.Hammond, Mason. Trajan. Encyclopdia
Britannica.
5. The World Bank. Social Protection.
6. Betcherman, G., Olivas, K. and Dar, A., 2004,
Impacts of Active Labor Market Programs: New
Evidence from Evaluations with Particular Attention
to Developing and Transition Countries, Social
Protection Discussion Paper Series no. 0402, World
Bank, Washington
7. Governance and Social Development Resource
Centre.