• Introduction

Introduction to livelihoods and social protection

Looks at how PRSPs are tackling the issue of "social protection": public policy concerned with the livelihoods and welfare of particularly poor and vulnerable group. The report particularly focuses on weaknesses of policies aimed at childhood and youth poverty. It is based on a desk study of six full and seventeen interim PRSPs.

Findings include:

• the general policy orientation emphasising growth, social services and improved governance despite evidence that shows poverty has increased or during periods of strong economic growth.
• while some strategies highlight equity concerns, it is not clear that these are necessarily reflected in policy choices
• I-PRSPs and PRSPs do not contain any explicit analysis of the differential social impact of particular policy choices
• the analysis of policy choices has been found to be of limited transparency, in that they do not encourage the active pursuit of alternatives
• the degree of detail in which policy is discussed is limited which is reflected by the lack of determinination of a specific course of action being taken towards implementing the various policies.
• social protection measures appear weakly redistributive where it appears to be principally through the route of increased expenditure on public services for the poorest.
• there is a sharp contrast between the role of the state, private sector and community in middle income and HIPC countries, where this is a striking contrast to the emphasis in the former is on privately-funded social protection mechanisms, such as health insurance, and is a salutary reminder of the limits to private sector involvement in social protection for very poor people
• the context in which childhood poverty is considered is predominantly based on supporting family incomes and access to health and education services, with provision for orphans or other ‘especially vulnerable children’. The evidence shows there is insufficient detail to analyse the likely effectiveness of these policies. Hence, few countries have been seen to be prioritising childhood poverty reduction

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