Transformative social protection

Download
Date
2004Author
Devereux, Stephen
Sabates-Wheeler, Rachel
Metadata
Show full item recordImpact
Abstract
Social protection describes all public and private initiatives that provide income or consumption transfers
to the poor, protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks, and enhance the social status and rights of the
marginalised; with the overall objective of reducing the economic and social vulnerability of poor,
vulnerable and marginalised groups. This paper argues against the popular perception of social protection
as “social welfare programmes for poor countries”, consisting of costly targeted transfers to economically
inactive or vulnerable groups. It also challenges the limited ambition of social protection policy in practice,
which has moved little from its origins in the “social safety nets” discourse of the 1980s, and aims to
provide “economic protection” against livelihood shocks, rather than “social protection” as broadly
defined here. Instead, we argue that social protection can be affordable; it should extend to all of the
population; it can contribute to the Millennium Development Goal of poverty reduction; and it can
empower marginalised people and be socially “transformative”.
Citation
Devereux, S. & R. Sabates-Wheeler (2004) Transformative social protection. Working paper series, 232. Brighton: IDS.Is part of series
IDS working papers;232Library catalogue entry
http://bldscat.ids.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=149400Rights holder
Institute of Development StudiesCollections
- IDS Research [1619]