Social protection programme design, implementation and evaluation

Social protection can be defined as the set of policies and programmes designed to reduce poverty and vulnerability by diminishing people's exposure to economic and social risks, enhancing their capacity to protect themselves from these risks, and reducing the impact of shocks that occur.

Different types of social protection policy interventions include:

Direct cash support to households and individuals (social assistance)

Social cash transfers; Conditional cash transfers (CCT's); Social pensions; Child grants

Social insurance

Pensions; Health insurance; Unemployment benefits

Labour market policies

Public work programmes; Wage subsidies

Emergency support

Food aid; Emergency cash transfers

With the exception of universal programmes, the design of any social protection intervention should start by explicitly defining the target population to be supported and the impact that the intervention aims to have on this group. The target population is usually determined by overall policy intention, which in turn reflects political priorities. Micro-simulations can be used to assess the relative poverty impact of targeting alternative population groups. A targeting process for accurately identifing those eligible for the programme has to be designed. This process must balance the need for targeting effectiveness as well as being administratively and finacial feasible. OPM has worked on the design of social protection programmes all over the world.

In addition to design, OPM has extensive experience in supporting national socail protection programmes implementation, including the development of administrative systems, implementation manuals, training procedures and on-going programme monitoring and policy feedback and fine-tuning. OPM also has extensive experience of evaluating social protection programmes, particularly the rigorous impact evaluation of cash transfer programmes underpinned by randomised controlled trial methodologies.