Blog

On 16 March 2021, ADB hosted, together with BRAC and with the support from socialprotection.org, a regional learning event on social protection for economic inclusion, which centred on the graduation approach as a key strategy for addressing remaining poverty and reducing inequality in Asia and the Pacific. The event highlighted key considerations for governments that are planning for, implementing, and scaling up the graduation approach. It shared new evidence from a randomized evaluation of a graduation program led by the Government of the Philippines and discussed lessons and insights on economic inclusion and support for poor and vulnerable households with technical experts focused on programme adaptation and scale. If you missed the event or want to watch it again, you can find the...Read more

COVID-19 has shown, once more, the vital importance of solidarity – the very spirit of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – including the urgency of achieving universal social protection for all human beings, no matter who or where they are. Universal social protection is a human right and key to recovery, for a green transition and for sustainable and inclusive economic and social development for individuals, communities and nations. All countries have committed to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG 1.3 to “implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable”, thereby signalling that ensuring social protection for all the world’s...Read more

This blog has been co-authored with Shraddha Shrivastava The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing gender inequalities with its disproportionate impact on women. Even before the pandemic, women in India spent nearly 7 times more hours on unpaid work compared to men (OECD Stat, 2021), which has surged further now (Chauhan, 2020). While lockdown restrictions and economic tensions are reported to have increased domestic violence (Rukmini, 2020), families are resorting to other negative coping mechanisms such as reducing food intake (Azim Premji University, 2020), pulling children out of school (Seethalakshmi, 2020), child labour (Ellis-Peterson and Chaurasia, 2020) and child marriage (BBC News, 2020) - a major brunt of which is borne by women and girls. Women are also more...Read more

Let’s start with a big headline! A new paper by Asfaw shows that in the early phases of the pandemic (March-May 2020), cash transfers and other social protection programs helped avoid 3.6 million additional Covid-19 cases and saved 166,690 lives . Those effects are higher in countries that provided more generous support. Bottom line? When examining the effectiveness of social protection programs, “… in addition to the consumption smoothing and other spillover effects of these programs, policymakers should consider the disease containing and mortality reduction benefits”. Moving to the dilemma on whether “to condition or not to condition”, Mookherjee and Napelb have a theoretical article by favors conditional cash transfers on the basis of, in their...Read more