Social protection systems in most Asian countries fall far short of meeting the needs of the poor and vulnerable even though better safety nets can be affordable for poorer countries.
A new study from Independent Evaluation at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said despite high economic growth in much of the region, public spending on social protection in Asia and the Pacific is lower than in any part of the world except for sub-Saharan Africa.
Recent economic and financial crises, food and fuel emergencies, and the rapidly increasing frequency of natural disasters have starkly exposed the inadequacy of the region’s national social protection systems to guarantee a minimum level of subsistence and meet people’s basic needs.
“Governments around the world tend to scramble to adopt social protection programs in times of crisis,” says the Director General of Independent Evaluation Vinod Thomas. “But comprehensive systems built in stable years are much more effective in coping with the human impact of future economic or political crises or natural disasters.”
Widening wealth gaps are also drawing attention to the need for greater social protection in Asia, where income disparities over the past two decades have widened in 11 countries that account for more than four-fifths of the region’s population.
All countries spend on the poor in some form or another, although there are considerable country variations in the levels and effectiveness of the spending. Concerns over the cost of universal social protection are deterring some countries, but well-targeted safety nets are not prohibitively expensive, says the study.
In the Philippines, for example, the government’s conditional cash transfer program to uproot extreme poverty costs less than 0.5 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, yet reaches 15 million people.
The program makes regular cash payments to mothers conditional on their children attending school and public health clinics. After just three years of implementation, evaluation findings show positive results on elementary education school enrollment and beneficiary households spending more on the health and education of their children.
