Tailoring Adaptive Social Safety Nets to Latin America and the Caribbean
Social safety nets (SSNs) are increasingly relevant to helping households prepare, cope, and adapt to shocks in a climate of increased frequency and severity of disasters. Disasters can impact the income, consumption, and human capital of household...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/427911593594428268/Guidance-Note http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34136 |
| Summary: | Social safety nets (SSNs) are
increasingly relevant to helping households prepare, cope,
and adapt to shocks in a climate of increased frequency and
severity of disasters. Disasters can impact the income,
consumption, and human capital of households. While
disasters caused by natural hazards can impact anyone, the
poor often bear the brunt of shock impacts, while vulnerable
and other disadvantaged populations fall into poverty. When
poor people are affected, the share of their wealth lost is
two to three times that of the non-poor, largely because of
the nature and vulnerability of their assets and
livelihoods. The poor also often employ negative coping
strategies following disasters, with long-lasting effects on
human capital accumulation and income. Where SSNs have good
coverage, adequacy, and incidence, they help ensure that the
households most likely to be severely impacted by these
events are able to smooth their consumption, build human
capital, improve their assets and diversify livelihoods -
all of which are increasingly critical to better
preparedness for shocks and improved ability to cope with,
and recover from, their impacts. An increasing number of
countries have used their SSNs, primarily cash transfers and
in-kind transfers, to respond to household needs following
different shocks including disasters caused by weather and
geological events, economic crisis and most recently, the
economic crisis due to the COVID-19 health pandemic. Latin
America and the Caribbean (LAC) exhibits larger coverage and
expenditures on SSNs compared to most regions, particularly
for cash transfer programs. SSNs in LAC also demonstrate
comparatively well-established SSN delivery systems. Given
this, there is unlocked potential in LAC to effectively
respond to disasters by systematically using SSNs when
appropriate. This note presents key lessons and design
considerations for LAC countries to better usetheir SSNs to
help individuals and households prepare, cope and adapt to
the shocks they face. While this note focuses on disasters
caused by natural hazards, the framework and lessons
presented here are applicable to other types of emergencies
and shocks. |
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