The Sourcebook on the Foundations of Social Protection Delivery Systems synthesizes real-world experiences and lessons learned of social protection delivery systems from around the globe. It takes a broad view of social protection, covering various intended populations such as poor or low-income families, unemployed workers, persons with disabilities, and individuals facing social risks. It discusses many types of interventions that governments provide to individuals, families, or households, including categorical programs, poverty-targeted programs, labor benefits and services, disability benefits and services, and social services. The Sourcebook seeks to address concrete “how-to†? questions, including: • How do countries deliver social protection benefits and services? • How do they do so effectively and efficiently? • How do they ensure dynamic inclusion, especially for the most vulnerable and needy? • How do they promote better coordination and integration—not only among social protection programs but also among programs in other parts of government? • How can they meet the needs of their intended populations and provide a better client experience? The delivery systems framework elaborates on the key elements of that operating environment. The framework is anchored in core implementation phases along the delivery chain. Key actors, including people and institutions, interact all along that delivery chain. Those interactions are facilitated by communications, information systems, and technology. This framework can apply to the delivery of one or many programs and to the delivery of adaptive social protection. The Sourcebook structures itself around eight key principles that can frame the delivery systems mind-set: 1. There is no single blueprint for delivery systems, but there are commonalities, and those common elements constitute the core of the delivery systems framework. 2. Quality of implementation matters, and weaknesses in any of the core elements will negatively affect the entire system, reducing the impacts of the program(s) they support. 3. Delivery systems evolve over time, in a nonlinear fashion, and their starting points matter. 4. Efforts should be made to “keep it simple†? and to “do simple well,†? from the start. 5. The “first mile†?—people’s direct interface with administrative functions—is often the weakest link in the delivery chain; improving it may take systemic change but will greatly improve overall efficiencies and mitigate the risk of failures on the frontlines. 6. Social protection programs do not operate in a vacuum, and thus their delivery systems should not be developed in silos; synergies across institutions and information systems are possible and can improve program outcomes. 7. Social protection delivery systems can contribute more broadly to government’s ability to serve other sectors, such as health insurance subsidies, scholarships, social energy tariffs, housing benefits, and legal services. 8. The dual challenges of inclusion and coordination are pervasive and perennial and encourage the continuous improvement of delivery systems, through a dynamic, integrated, and human-centered approach.

Adaptive social protection (ASP) helps to build the resilience of poor and vulnerable households to the impacts of large, covariate shocks, such as natural disasters, economic crises, pandemics, conflict, and forced displacement. Through the provision of transfers and services directly to these households, ASP supports their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to the shocks they face—before, during, and after these shocks occur. Over the long term, by supporting these three capacities, ASP can provide a pathway to a more resilient state for households that may otherwise lack the resources to move out of chronically vulnerable situations. Adaptive Social Protection: Building Resilience to Shocks outlines an organizing framework for the design and implementation of ASP, providing insights into the ways in which social protection systems can be made more capable of building household resilience. By way of its four building blocks—programs, information, finance, and institutional arrangements and partnerships—the framework highlights both the elements of existing social protection systems that are the cornerstones for building household resilience, as well as the additional investments that are central to enhancing their ability to generate these outcomes. In this report, the ASP framework and its building blocks have been elaborated primarily in relation to natural disasters and associated climate change. Nevertheless, many of the priorities identified within each building block are also pertinent to the design and implementation of ASP across other types of shocks, providing a foundation for a structured approach to the advancement of this rapidly evolving and complex agenda.

This exciting and innovative Handbook provides readers with a comprehensive and globally relevant overview of the instruments, actors and design features of social protection systems, as well as their application and impacts in practice. It is the first book that centres around system building globally, a theme that has gained political importance yet has received relatively little attention in academia.

Universal basic income (UBI) is emerging as one of the most hotly debated issues in development and social protection policy. But what are the features of UBI? What is it meant to achieve? How do we know, and what don’t we know, about its performance? What does it take to implement it in practice? Drawing from global evidence, literature, and survey data, this volume provides a framework to elucidate issues and trade-offs in UBI with a view to help inform choices around its appropriateness and feasibility in different contexts. Specifically, the book examines how UBI differs from or complements other social assistance programs in terms of objectives, coverage, incidence, adequacy, incentives, effects on poverty and inequality, financing, political economy, and implementation. It also reviews past and current country experiences, surveys the full range of existing policy proposals, provides original results from micro†“tax benefit simulations, and sets out a range of considerations around the analytics and practice of UBI.

Ethiopia has long prioritized creating more and better jobs as core to its sustainable and inclusive development. However, steady growth in the gross domestic product and gains in agricultural productivity in recent decades have not translated into better opportunities nor increased earnings for much of the population. The 2021 Labor Force Survey data reveal labor trends since 1999 and underscore these realities. Moreover, COVID-19 and other shocks have reinforced the disconnect between positive macroeconomic trends at a national level and stagnant incomes at the household level. Working Today for a Better Tomorrow in Ethiopia: Jobs for Poor and Vulnerable Households outlines how Ethiopia can leverage its social safety net programs to help poor and vulnerable workers earn more in today’s labor market. The government’s latest development planning policies focus on private sector growth and structural transformation to create more and better jobs. While these long-term reforms take hold, the jobs agenda also must include near-term measures to improve worker productivity in and connect people to jobs that already exist. Complementing cash transfers with capital, training, and other services can help workers earn more in their current work, diversify into new types of employment, or connect to available wage jobs.These investments can have an immediate impact for poor people in Ethiopia while also contributing to sustainable and inclusive development.

Targeting is a commonly used, but much debated, policy tool within global social assistance practice. Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance: A New Look at Old Dilemmas examines the well-known dilemmas in light of the growing body of experience, new implementation capacities, and the potential to bring new data and data science to bear. The book begins by considering why or whether or how narrowly or broadly to target different parts of social assistance and updates the global empirics around the outcomes and costs of targeting. It illustrates the choices that must be made in moving from an abstract vision to implementable definitions and procedures, and in deciding how the choices should be informed by values, empirics, and context. The importance of delivery systems and processes to distributional outcomes are emphasized, and many facets with room for improvement are discussed. The book also explores the choices between targeting methods and how differences in purposes and contexts shape those. The know-how with respect to the data and inference used by the different household-specific targeting methods is summarized and comprehensively updated, including a focus on “big data†? and machine learning. A primer on measurement issues is included. Key findings include the following: · Targeting selected categories, families, or individuals plays a valuable role within the framework of universal social protection. · Measuring the accuracy and cost of targeting can be done in many ways, and judicious choices require a range of metrics. · Weighing the relatively low costs of targeting against the potential gains is important. · Implementing inclusive delivery systems is critical for reducing errors of exclusion and inclusion. · Selecting and customizing the appropriate targeting method depends on purpose and context; there is no method preferred in all circumstances. · Leveraging advances in technology—ICT, big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning—can improve targeting accuracy, but they are not a panacea; better data matters more than sophistication in inference. · Targeting social protection should be a dynamic process.