Social Security, Poverty Reduction and Development

This paper is written as a think piece to strengthen the ILO's campaign to promote the extension of the coverage of social security. In so doing, the paper has attempted to put forward a number of arguments for enlarging both the concept and the coverage of social security especially in developing countries. It argues that social security should address the twin problems of deficiency and adversity. As such the concept of social security has been enlarged to include, what may be called, Basic Social Security (BSS) to take care of deficiency and Contingent Social Security (CSS) to meet contingencies. Without addressing BSS, it is unlikely to meet with success in the case of extending CSS. To strengthen the argument the lessons from the historical experience of western countries have been highlighted. The historical experience also shows that issues of social security have received the attention of the state much before industrialization and graduation into rich countries. There is also evidence to show that extension of social security has been possible mainly by state intervention of one kind or another. Having argued for the extension of BSS, the paper also deals with the extension of CSS. This is best done through the informal economy, which employs a large majority of workers in developing countries. While the primacy of the role of the state has been highlighted, the paper has developed a typology of various social security models that could be used to study and understand the existing arrangements as well as the potentialities for extension of social security in the developing countries. It is hoped that this typology could be used with reference to the specific context of countries and/or regions. Finally the paper has made a number of suggestions for the study of alternative models and analysis of public policies for extension of social security. The need for documenting best practices has been emphasized