Towards a More Adaptive Social Protection System in Zambia

This report provides a quantification of the households vulnerable to falling into poverty as the result of a shock, as well as a qualitative analysis of the level of adaptability of the current social protection system in Zambia. The analysis is based on the Stress Test Tool developed by the World Bank, which assesses the adaptability of social protection systems and their ability to respond to shocks. The tool consists of two parts that gather valuable information to guide public policies or inform project investments. The first part of the tool evaluates the most relevant sources of risk that are expected to require a large response from the social protection sector and provides an estimate of the number and characteristics of people who would require support in the event of a shock, those vulnerable to poverty. This part of the tool also identifies the main sources of vulnerability: structural or poverty-induced (due to sustained low levels of income/consumption), and risk-induced (due to the exposure to covariate or idiosyncratic shocks). The second part of the tool assesses the capacity of the existing social protection system to scale up rapidly in times of shock, identifying potential constraints and highlighting areas for future investments.This report is divided into 7 chapters. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the country’s context and its structural vulnerabilities. The Stress Test Tool that is used to measure the level of adaptiveness of the country’s social protection system is presented in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 introduces the conceptual framework for providing a quantifiable measure of those who are vulnerable to poverty in Zambia and presents the results of the quantitative analysis. A brief description of the current structure of the Social Protection System in the country follows in Chapter 5, while Chapter 6 presents the framework to assess the structure of scalability and adaptability of social protection in Zambia and presents the results of the qualitative diagnostic. Finally, Chapter 7 lists the key recommendations emerging from the results of the analyses as well as concluding comments.