The first post in this new year will refer to some of my posts in 2011, namely those on Myanmar. The Centre for Social Protection/IDS has just published a new Working Paper by Yoshimi Nishino and Gabrielle Koehler on the potential for social protection in Myanmar. The paper provides a clear call for a comprehensive social protection strategy in the country, and discusses various options against the backdrop of other experiences in the region. Although the challenges are numerous, related to political challenges as well as the widespread vulnerability across the country, the paper is also mildly positive given the changing policy landscape and the potential opportunities that may arise.

Last month, UNICEF published a regional report on child poverty in East Asia and the Pacific, including analysis of 7 countries: Cambodia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand, Vanuatu and Viet Nam. The regional report is part of UNICEF global study on child poverty and disparities, and provides cross-country comparisons as well as country-specific analyses of child poverty where available.

One of the countries for which country-specific analysis is included is Viet Nam. The particular findings that are presented in the regional report spring from the national report that was prepared by Franziska Gassmann, Chris de Neubourg and myself for UNICEF Viet Nam in 2009. Rather than using those findings to analyse child poverty in Viet Nam from a more country-specific perspectie, the report uses them to illustrate the pros and cons of comparative versus country-specific studies. It argues that a country-specific study, incorporating indicators and thresholds that are deemed relevant and appropriate to capture child poverty within the country-context, can be helpful in tailoring development policies and programmes to the national context, and also support cooperation amongst local stakeholders. In a report that is focused on cross-country comparisons across a region as a whole, it is encouraging to see the value-added of such country-specific studies being highlighted.

The BBC broadcasted an interesting documentary yesterday by its political editor Nick Robinson, Your Money and How They Spend It. In this first of two episodes, he discussed what the UK government spends its money on and what informs the decisions in how to do it. One of the examples was on old-age pensions, presenting an interesting illustration of how politics inform the design of a social protection programme and the amount of money spent on it.

The particular type of pension (the winter fuel subsidy) is universal, meaning that everybody over a certain age will receive them, regardless of their income. The amount of this particular subsidy has been steadily increased in the late 90s and early 2000 under Labour government, causing costs to go up (with some arguing to have spiralled out of control). One obvious option would be to make the subsidy means-tested; i.e. to award it only to those that ‘need’ it as they have an income below a certain level. But this is tricky… and no government has shown willing to take this political risk. Pensioners are loyal voters, and organise themselves well. To deny a (large) group of them from a subsidy that they have been receiving for years will have serious consequences in terms of political support. And so it is that despite voices and proposals from both left and right to reform particular welfare policies, the status quo is maintained.

As much as we would like to inform policies with evidence of what works and what doesn’t, this is a strong reminder that social protection policy making is not just a technocratic exercise.

These are exciting times in Myanmar, and the country has been in the news frequently in the last few weeks. There was a (limited) release of political prisoners, Myanmar will chair ASEAN in 2014, Hilary Clinton has announced a visit to the country for next week and Aung San Suu Kyi has decided to run in a by-election to become a member of parliament. Despite the country’s oppressive history in the last twenty years, these changes give rise to cautious optimism. Certainly as they are also mirrored by small, but significant, changes that I noticed during my visit to the country last week. The growing flow of tourists made it difficult to book a hotel room; I had access to virtually all websites; and posters of Aung San Suu Kyi, and her father, were sold on the streets in the centre of Yangon. Small, but very notable, changes since my previous visit in December last year.

This sense of positive change also seems to ring through, albeit slowly, in policy discussions. The opening of policy space allows for more constructive debates around development in the country, and a response to the dire living conditions of many people in Myanmar. I presented preliminary findings of a study on child well-being and, against the backdrop of those findings, took part in a workshop to discuss the potential for social protection to improve the lives of children in the country. It was very encouraging to see the level of commitment with national participants in that workshop, and the growing momentum around issues of social policy and social protection. Yes, there is a danger to be too optimistic, but last week’s experience confirmed my belief it would be a missed opportunity not to engage at all – change is happening and now is the time to be supportive in making that change a positive one.

A new IDS Bulletin has just been published with the title “Social Protection for Social Justice”. It mirrors the title of the conference held at IDS in April of this year, and organised by the Centre for Social Protection. The Bulletin is a collection of papers from that conference and structured around its four themes, being (1) democratic governance, social protection and social contracts, (2) social protection to address underlying drivers of vulnerability, (3) social protection and climate change, and (4) social protection and redistributive justice. In culmination, the Bulletin presents a broad overview of current debates in social protection and provides a strong argument for pushing those discussions beyond conventional boundaries towards more aspirational thinking around social protection. As is argued in the introductory article, coverage of social protection should not only be extended by increasing the numbers of beneficiaries of programmes but more so by institutionalising such programmes, making them claims- and entitlement-based and by building social contracts between institutions and its citizens.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in the UK warns that child poverty will increase, rather than decrease, as a result of the government’s austerity measures and welfare reform. Although the government has set itself a legally binding target of reducing the number of relatively poor children by 2020, IFS warns that the number may increase by 500.000 and reach 3 million in 2015. By 2020, this number is expected to have increased to 3.3 million. Child poverty, in this case, is measured as the proportion of the UK’s children living in a family with an income below 60% of the country’s median income. Despite these concerning warning notes, the DWP does not seem to be impressed and hold strong belief that the Universal Credit will make a positive and substantial contribution to reducing child poverty.

A new IDS/Centre for Social Protection working paper on social protection in Vietnam has just been published online. In this paper, I discuss the potential of social protection in Vietnam to reduce child poverty and/or stop the intergenerational transmission of poverty. The paper can be found here.

it’s also about the politics. As this post by Jonathan Glennie on the Guardian’s Poverty Matters blog indicates, political motivations may indeed be an important part in Columbia’s decision to make the new Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) the most important measure for a new poverty reduction plan.

This shift in the use of poverty measures in itself is exciting and promising; income measures of poverty have been used as the ’golden standard’  for poverty reduction planning and monitoring efforts for decades. Although non-monetary and multidimensional measures have come into play as far back as the 1970′s (with Amartya Sen’s capability approach and the more policy-oriented Human Development Index by the UN), they never truely found their way into national development plans or poverty reduction strategies. Colombia’s move to make the MPI the basis for poverty reduction targets is a first commitment at national level to explicitly consider issues of education, health and housing, thereby implicitly acknowledging that ‘money can’t buy it all’.

The recognition that poverty measures other than the income-based one may do a better job to guide poverty reduction efforts may be an exciting one but there is a sidenote to this shift in focus in Colombia. The introduction of a new poverty measures changes poverty levels: from one day to the next, the proportion of Colombians living in poverty drops from 64% to 9%. It’s easy to see the temptation in trying to attribute (some of) this staggering drop to political merit rather than a mere change in poverty measurement.

But change in thinking about poverty has to start somewhere and any change in the use of poverty measures will have an effect on poverty rates; either upwards or downwards. Colombia may be criticized for artificially lowering poverty levels by a change of measurement; the USA may be so for keeping its poverty rates at artificially low levels by hanging on to a poverty method developed by Orshansky in, and modelled on life in, the 1960′s. Let’s take the Colombian experience as a positive one and hope it will serve as an example for other countries to think more critically about the poverty measures they’re using and its implications for the most vulnerable in society.

this new article by Nicholas Freeland on the Wahenga website is an entertaining read about social protection, presenting four different stereotypes around those working in the field of social protection and development. The notion of Productivists versus Ten-Percenters, Instrumentalists and Universalists may not be very nuanced, it’s not very far from the truth either. At the very least, it makes for an intersting and entertaining read and makes anyone working on this issue reflect on their own position in this.