ECON 532
Inclusive Growth and Crisis Response: The Role of Social Protection Systems Spring 2023
Division II
Cross-listed
This is not the current course catalog

Over the past three decades, developing countries have increasingly expanded social protection systems to tackle poverty and vulnerability while promoting inclusive social development and equitable economic growth. These systems provide pro-poor policy instruments that can balance trade and labor market reforms, fiscal adjustments (such as reduced general subsidies) and other economic policies aimed at enabling better market performance. In addition, social protection systems help vulnerable people to cope with shocks to their livelihoods, promoting resilience, human capital development and sometimes high-return risk-taking. In times of crisis, these systems are more important than ever. From March to June 2020, the World Bank identified 195 countries that have adapted and expanded their social protection systems to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. This tutorial offers the opportunity to explore how shock-responsive social protection systems can better enable developing countries to respond to global and local shocks in a manner that minimizes the medium- to long-term costs of the resulting crises. The tutorial examines how developing countries build social protection systems to tackle poverty, vulnerability and social exclusion that result from global and local shocks. Topics include how the design and implementation of effective interventions both respond to crises and strengthen long-term developmental outcomes. The tutorial focuses on country responses to the COVID-19 pandemic as both a relevant case study and an example of the kinds of global crises to which national social protection systems must be able to respond in the future.