Social Protection Responses to Crises
and their Impacts on Children:
Learning from Past Lessons in
Indonesia and Ethiopia
Maricar Garde and Jenn Yablonski
The Global Economic Crisis - Including Children in the Policy
Response
UNICEF-ODI
9-10 November 2009'
Outline of presentation
• Introduction
• Brief review of literature
• Case studies
– Description of programmes
– Problems
– Successes
• Lessons and insights from Indonesia and
Ethiopia
2
Introduction
• Policy essay looking at Indonesia and Ethiopia’s
experience with social protection programmes (SP)
• SP programmes implemented under different contexts
but a number of similar challenges/successes arise
• Indonesia’s crisis stemmed from the financial sector
while Ethiopia suffered from chronic food shortage—
features present in the current crisis
• The paper is not an impact analysis nor does it try to
make generalisations
• Highlights insights that are relevant to the present crisis
3
How do aggregate shocks affect households
and children?
• Aggregate shocks tend to increase poverty and lead to
a deterioration of social indicators in developing
countries
• Impacts differ across households depending on wealth,
geographic location, demographics and education
• Households resort to networks or
• Severe coping mechanisms (Ravallion, 2008):
– Borrowing or selling-off productive assets
– Switching to a less expensive but lower quality diet
– Withdrawing children from school and at times putting them to
work
4
How do aggregate shocks affect households
and children?
• Previous crises have led to:
– Increased food insecurity (Studdert et. al., 2001)
– Maternal wasting in Indonesia (Block et. al., 2004)
– Reduced probability of school attendance in Argentina (Rucci,
2003)
– Increased incidence of child labour in Tanzania (Beegle et. al.,
2006)
• Children may disproportionately suffer from irreversible
consequence—malnutrition and missed years in school
may alter children’s productivity and earnings during
adulthood (Ravallion, 2008; Strauss and Thomas,
2008; Victora et al., 2008)
5
Analysis of Social Protection Programmes:
Indonesia
6
Indonesia: National Safety Net Programme
(JPS)
•
JPS introduced in 1998—without any institutional antecedent—as
a response to the Asian Financial Crisis, five components are:
– Sale of subsidised rice (OPK)
– Employment creation programmes (Padat Karya)
– Scholarships and block grants
– Healthcare including nutrition supplement programme
– Community fund programme
•
Funded by the national government, the Asian Development
Bank and the World Bank
•
Implemented by national agencies together with local and village
authorities
7
JPS: Challenges and successes
•
Inadequate coverage of most programmes except for
the rice subsidy scheme (OPK)
•
Targeting mostly based on household income
classification from previous surveys—missed those
made vulnerable by the crisis
•
Local-level intervention with the distribution of benefits
improved targeting in some areas
•
Households that participated in the OPK scheme
reduced their probability of falling into poverty by 4%
(Sumarto et. al., 2005)
8
JPS: Impacts on Children
•
•
•
9
Households which benefited from the OPK scheme
and scholarships saw a 4 % and 10% rise
(respectively) in consumption (Sumarto et. al., 2005)
Scholarship programme reduced drop-out by 3
percentage points at the lower secondary school level
which historically was the level most susceptible to
drop-outs (Cameron, 2009)
Beneficiaries of the nutrition programme
(supplementary food programme) achieved better
nutritional status than those who did not participate
from the scheme (Satriawan, 2006)
Analysis of Social Protection Programmes:
Ethiopia
10
Ethiopia: Productive Safety Net Programme
(PSNP)
• PSNP marked shift to systematic response to
chronic food insecurity
• Two components: public works & direct
support
• Aims to protect households from shocks:
reduce food insecurity & asset depletion
• Households receive different combinations of
food and/or cash over six-month period
11
PSNP: Challenges and successes
•
•
•
Initial problems related to targeting, timeliness of transfers, and
amount of employment per household
Challenges prevented participating households from improving
their food security in 2006
Modest improvements over time with repeated surveys in 2006
and 2008 showing that PSNP is protecting beneficiaries to some
extent
•
High rates of inflation affected the cash transfers—e.g.
households in Amhara lost 56% of their purchasing power over 7
months
•
Combination of inflation & different packages mean real value
varies substantially between households/areas
12
PSNP: Impacts on Children
•
•
Households receiving cash were spending part of it on
education (15% of hhs) and health (29%)
Increased use of healthcare facilities, enrolment of
children, and attendance attributed to the PSNP
(Devereux et al., 2006; Slater et al. 2006)
•
But labour requirements affect selection and
participation in the programme—unintended impacts
for some women and children
•
Work requirement leads to increased children’s work
at home in order to replace adult labour being used for
PSNP (Slater et al. 2006, Woldehanna 2009)
13
Learning from Indonesia’s JPS
and
Ethiopia’s PSNP
14
Lessons and Insights
• The nature of the shock affects both the social
protection response of the government, and
possibly the longer-term prospects for the
programmes
• Ethiopia’s experience of periodic shocks led to
the development of a more predicted and
multi-year safety nets programme
• But certain factors such as donor dependence
make the future if the PSNP unclear
15
Lessons and Insights
•
•
•
16
The JPS did not continue after Indonesia recovered
Fuel subsidies were continued but later phased-out,
and Indonesia tried a cash-transfer programme in
2006
Poor coverage and targeting are often a problem but
can be improved as the programme progresses
Indonesia’s experience with using previous income
classification highlights the need for real-time
coverage during shocks
> importance of investing in capacity (before crisis)
Lessons and Insights
•
•
•
17
SP design needs to be gender- and child-sensitive to
minimise differential impacts among households
members
Programmes in Ethiopia and Indonesia did produce
some positive results despite implementation
challenges—the most obvious impact is protecting
consumption during times of insecurity
Social protection can prevent aggregate shocks from
causing long-term consequences, e.g. children by
protecting nutrition and preventing drop-outs
Thank you for listening
Questions and comments are welcome