Hardly Anyone Is Too Poor to Share: A basic level of social protection is affordable nearly everywhere

• Author: Michael Cichon
• Position: Fellow of the International Council on Social Welfare and its immediate past president. He is a former professor of social protection at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance at the United Nations University in Maastricht, Netherlands
• Pages: 14-15

14 FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT | December 2018

“THE WORLD DOES NOT

lack the resources to abol-

ish poverty, it lacks the right priorities.” So said

Juan Somavía, former director genera l of the

International Labour Orga nization (ILO), in 1999.

We may have made progress in recent decades,

but the world remains a miserable place for more

than half of its population. Each person in that

majority suffers from at least one of three hum an-

made or at least human-tolerated societal plag ues:

gross inequality, debilitating inse curity, and inhu-

mane poverty. We have known for more than a

century what ca n be done to make things better.

Social protection effectively a nd swiftly reduce s

inequality and povert y through tra nsfers in cash

and kind. A solid basic level of socia l protection is

affordable and implementable nearly every where.

It can be achieved now or—at lea st after some

investment in good governance— fairly soon.

For decades, the community of nations has had a

global ethical compass when it comes to social pro-

tection. Since the ILO’s 1944 recommendations on

income security and medical care—and the 1948

Universal Declaration of Human Rights—social pro-

tection has been recognized as a human right. More

recently, the ILO’s 2012 Recommendation R202

concerning national social protection floors and the

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted at a

United Nations summit in 2015, have given concrete

content to the right to social protection.

R202 provides guida nce on introducing basic

social protection, defining t he twin objectives of

income and health securit y as the ability to access

all essential goods and service s. is requires a

balance of cash a nd direct provision of service s.

e overriding objective is to achieve universal

protection for all who need it.

e SDGs likewise pursue a broad a genda

including social tra nsfers, health care, education,

and other essential ser vices. e main social protec-

tion targets are to “implement nationally appropriate

social protection systems a nd measures for all’’ and

to “achieve universal health coverage, including

financia l risk protection.’’

What has kept us from ma king greater progress

toward socia l justice?

Publicly financed social protection transfers were

often portrayed as unsustainable and detrimental

to economic development. Many societies’ and

governments’ economic and development strategies

were based on economic myths—among them the

alleged trade-off between economic performance

and redistribution, and the theory that the trickle-

down effect would automatically reduce poverty

and inequality as economies develop. Reality and

research show that these are merely myths. Virtually

all developed economies have substantial social

protection systems, with expenditure of 20 to 27

percent of GDP and more. ere is no proof that

they have sacrificed much growth as they com-

bated poverty, inequality, and insecurity. If the

trickle-down myth were true, we would not see

wide variation in poverty and inequality between

countries with similar per capita GDP. Markets—

left to themselves—do not develop conduits for

redistribution other than transfers of wealth or

sharing of income within family or kinship groups.

However, the knockout myth that has often stifled

progress in social protection is that it is not affordable

Hardly Anyone Is Too Poor to Share

A basic level of social protection is affordable nearly everywhere

Michael Cichon

PHOTO: COURTESY OF MICHAEL CICHON

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