Social Protection

in the Philippines
Joanna B. Guerrero
What Social Security and Protection?

• Set of policies and programs designed to reduce poverty and vulnerability

by promoting efficient labor markets, diminishing people’s exposure to
risks, and enhancing their capacity to protect themselves against hazards and
interruption/loss of income.

• Aims to assist individuals to break the cycle of poverty and enhance the
countries quality of growth by investing in human capital, increasing
productivity, and reducing citizen’s vulnerability to risks.
What Social Security and Protection?

• Recent events underscore the need for greater attention to social protection issues in the
Philippines. The countries affected by the Pandemic have discovered that inadequate and
underdeveloped social protection systems have exposed their working populations to
excessive risk, increased the incidence of poverty, and threatened to undermine longer
term human capital investment efforts.
• Different kinds of reforms and policies are needed in different economies. Where social
protection systems have become too expensive and are no longer appropriate to serve a
country’s vulnerable populations, they need to be restructured and consolidated. Where
these systems are inadequate to deal with the major risks faced by rural and urban
populations, social protection needs to be extended and expanded.
What Social Security and Protection?

• Recent events underscore the need for greater attention to social protection issues in
the Philippines. The countries affected by the Pandemic have discovered that
inadequate and underdeveloped social protection systems have exposed their
working populations to excessive risk, increased the incidence of poverty, and
threatened to undermine longer term human capital investment efforts.
• Different kinds of reforms and policies are needed in different economies. Where
social protection systems have become too expensive and are no longer appropriate
to serve a country’s vulnerable populations, they need to be restructured and
consolidated. Where these systems are inadequate to deal with the major risks faced
by rural and urban populations, social protection needs to be extended and
expanded.
 Labor Markets

Social Insurance
Five
Components of Social Assistance
Social
Protection Micro and area-based schemes to
protect communities

Child Protection
Labor Market Interventions

• Enhance employment opportunities in the country

• Advance Filipino workers’ rights and welfare
• skills development and training
• Labor and trade policies
• Agricultural support
• Address the risks of underemployment, unemployment and loss of income in the country
• Examples
• AlkanSSSya Program
• Technical Education and Skills Development Authority scholarship programs
Social Insurance

• Address the risks associated with disability, work-related injury, old age, and
crop disasters
• Examples:
• Public retirement and pension plans
• Agricultural Insurance Program (AIP)
 • Preventive and protective in nature
• Support the minimum basic needs of the poor and
marginalized
• They address:
• Food insecurity
• Hunger and poor nutrition
Social welfare • Poor quality of education
• Land and housing insecurity
• Poor sanitation
• Example: Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program
(4Ps)
Social Safety Nets

• Address the impacts of socioeconomic shocks such as:

• Environmental degradation
• Disasters
• Armed conflicts
• Short-term stop-gap measures such as:
• Unconditional cash transfers
• Feeding programs
• Price and food subsidies
• Emergency employment and loans
CHALLENGES

• AIP still suffers from low penetration rate, with less than 5% of the rice
farmers availing its services.
• The Country’s National Health Insurance program for the poor suffers
from leakage issues. Aside from the poor, the program also benefits the
nonpoor sector.
• 4Ps leakage issues. It has a leakage rate of 29%. 3 in every 10
beneficiaries of the program are not poor and do not even deserve to
enjoy its benefits. One reason behind the leakage is the fact that the
program uses outdated data in targeting its benefeciaries.
• Strengthen the programs’ targeting rules given that many of them suffer
from leakage
• Invest in monitoring and evaluation to ensure that these interventions are
meeting their objectives.
• We need to adopt innovative measures in the country. Such as adaptive
social protection (ASP) Programs.
• ASP is a relatively new concept that intersects social protection, climate
change adaptation, and disaster risk reduction measures to strengthen the
poverty reduction efforts of the government.

CONCLUSION
 There is still much to be fixed in the country’s
current social protection measures. However, the good
CONCLUSIO performance of programs such as AlkanSSSya,
PESFA, and 4Ps in terms of improving the situation of

N their beneficiaries should serve as an inspiration to

the government to continue promoting social
protection as a tool to uplift the lives of the poor and
the vulnerable.
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!