Social Protection: Accelerating the MDGs with Equity

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals will need accelerated interventions in key areas. This Brief illustrates how social protection programmes can help to accelerate progress to the MDGs by facilitating access to essential services and decent living standards. It summarises evidence on the breadth and effectiveness of social protection programmes in promoting development, enhancing equity and delivering results for vulnerable children, women and households, and highlights opportunities for using these programmes more widely in the global context of a recovery for all.