Can you help shape our future priorities? Take a five minute survey now. Survey closes on 8 July.

Working Paper

IDS Working Paper 232

Transformative Social Protection

Published on 1 January 2004

Social protection describes all public and private initiatives that provide income or consumption transfers to the poor, protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks, and enhance the social status and rights of the marginalised; with the overall objective of reducing the economic and social vulnerability of poor, vulnerable and marginalised groups.

This paper argues against the popular perception of social protection as ‘social welfare programmes for poor countries’, consisting of costly targeted transfers to economically inactive or vulnerable groups. It also challenges the limited ambition of social protection policy in practice, which has moved little from its origins in the ‘social safety nets’ discourse of the 1980s, and aims to provide ‘economic protection’ against livelihood shocks, rather than ‘social protection’ as broadly defined here. Instead, we argue that social protection can be affordable; it should extend to all of the population; it can contribute to the Millennium Development Goal of poverty reduction; and it can empower marginalised people and be socially ‘transformative’.

Cite this publication

Devereux, S. and Sabates-Wheeler, R. (2004) Transformative Social Protection, IDS Working Paper, Brighton: IDS

Authors

Rachel Sabates-Wheeler

Research Fellow

Stephen Devereux

Professorial Fellow

Publication details

published by
IDS
authors
Devereux, S. and Sabates-Wheeler, R.
journal
IDS Working Paper, issue 232
isbn
1 85864 844 0
language
English

Share

About this publication

Programmes and centres
Centre for Social Protection

Related content

Working Paper

Fragmented Power, Access and Legitimacy: The Politics of Social Assistance in Yemen’s Conflict (2014–24)

BASIC Research Working Paper 38

30 June 2025

Working Paper

Reframing the Accountability of Social Assistance in Crises: Emerging Evidence and Promising Practices

BASIC Research Working Paper 39

18 June 2025

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.