A Family Stimulus – Supporting Children, Families and the Economy through the Pandemic
“The UK has in place one of the least generous social security systems in the developed world” warns report titled: A Family Stimulus: Supporting children, families and the economy through the pandemic recently released by Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) in collaboration with Trades Union Congress (TUC).
Crocodiles and CROCO dials: How the metrics of Coverage, Rate, Ownership, Continuity and Opportunity demonstrate the superiority of life-course social protection
By Nicholas Freeland I have just read a paper[1] on social protection in Africa with which I profoundly disagree. It has a good main title – “Beware of the Crocodile” – but it goes steadily downhill from there. Even the sub-title is misleading: “Quantitative Evidence on How Universal Old Age Grants...
A line in the sand – how a human rights definition of poverty can push the fight to the next level
By Lucilla Bertolli Philip Alston will be missed in his role as United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty, both for his razor-sharp look at mainstream development policies and for his constant reminders of their shortfalls. During his tenure, Alston effectively bridged the universal human rights framework with social and...
Calling Marcus Rashford: universal child benefits need you!
Last week, the United Kingdom’s social protection system took yet another big step back towards the 19th Century. The news broke that, during the current COVID-19 lockdown, when schools are closed to most pupils, the Government is providing schoolchildren living in poverty with food handouts, rather than offering their families cash. To make a bad situation worse, the food on offer is of limited nutritional quality while the main beneficiary of the scheme has been the business that was contracted by the Government...
The vaccine against poverty, inequality and insecurity needs a stronger prescription
The COVID crisis is an opportunity to make the recognition of the role of social protection more permanent, and there is an almost unique opportunity to achieve this.
Who are the “poor and vulnerable”? A view from Karamoja, Uganda
Across the globe, governments, researchers and international agencies have striven to better understand poverty and vulnerability, and to provide technocratic solutions to measure income or multidimensional deprivations. Some of these solutions are aimed at guiding policies that will then, hopefully, address poverty in a particular context