The Social Protection Indicator for Asia

Assessing Progress

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• Publisher: Asian Development Bank
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9789292616700
• eBook ISBN:
  9789292616717
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This publication provides updates on Social Protection Indicators of 24 countries in Asia, with an analysis of 2015 data on social protection programs. It shows progress in expenditure, primarily driven by social insurance and coverage between 2009 and 2015. Spending on women has improved in several countries, yet others continued to favor the nonpoor over the poor, and men over women. The Social Protection Index---now the Social Protection Indicator---was developed by the Asian Development Bank and its partners as the first comprehensive and quantitative measure of social protection systems in Asia and the Pacific.

1
Overview and Methodology

This report presents the analysis of comprehensive 2015 data on government social protection programs in 25 countries in Asia (excluding, notably, India). It uses the Social Protection Indicator (SPI) for assessing social protection within and across countries.

This report continues the effort to systematically track and assess developments in social protection. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and its development partners originally developed its precursor—the Social Protection Index—in 2005 as a tool to monitor social protection in Asia and the Pacific. This report updates the results of a 2012 analysis for Asia published in 2016 (ADB 2016b).

Systematic and comprehensive monitoring and evaluation are essential for improving social protection systems to enhance their capacity to support the poor and vulnerable. The SPI approach offers uniform indicators that can help governments and other stakeholders assess the effectiveness of social protection systems and to track progress over time. At country level, it assesses social protection systems as well as progress. At cross-country level, it can help trace and assess patterns in social protection. This SPI monitoring helps track the progress of target 1.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).¹

The analysis in this report is useful for two reasons. First, the report provides data on all types of government social protection initiatives, focusing on aggregate expenditure, coverage, benefit size, and poverty and gender dimensions. This enables one to assess social protection as a system by looking at social protection as a whole. The SPI thus complements existing national monitoring and evaluation tools, which tend to focus on individual programs rather than the overall system.

Second, the SPI analysis allows a focus on distinct categories of social protection activities. It provides disaggregated data on components of social protection systems and allows one to assess their relative significance. These components comprise three “categories”—social insurance, social assistance, and active labor market programs (ALMPs)—and include corresponding “programs,” like health insurance, pensions, and welfare assistance (Table 1).

Table 1: Social Protection Categories and Programs

Sources: ADB. 2011. The Revised Social Protection Index: Methodology and Handbook. Manila; ADB. 2016b. The Social Protection Indicator: Assessing Results for Asia. Manila.

This report also presents comparisons of social protection indicators for 24 countries over time between 2009 and 2015.²

Since its inception, the SPI methodology has been reviewed and revised to refine the way the indicators are constructed and used. SPI results for 2004–2005, 2009, and 2012 were published in three reports (ADB 2006, 2013, and 2016b). The analysis of 2015 data in this report follows the methodology used in the 2016 publication, and the results in both reports are compatible.

What Is the Social Protection Indicator?

The SPI is an indicator for assessing social protection effectiveness within and across countries. Going beyond measuring social protection expenditure as a share of aggregate GDP, the SPI assesses expenditure for each intended beneficiary as a share of GDP per capita. Intended beneficiary population groups are the key unit for assessing social protection effectiveness in this report—in other words, the share of the population that could qualify for benefits from a particular social protection category and program. The report distinguishes intended beneficiaries from actual beneficiaries, that is, those given support in practice. This distinction is captured by the coverage indicator, which measures the share of actual beneficiaries in the total intended beneficiary population. The SPI is a relative indicator against the average GDP per capita of each country.³

Table 2 presents the main intended beneficiary groups for each of the programs. A detailed explanation for defining and selecting the groups is in ADB (2011).

Table 2: Social Protection Programs and Intended Beneficiary Groups

Program	Group
Health insurance	Employed population
Health assistance	Poor population
Unemployment insurance	Employed population
Pensions	Population aged 60 years and above
Welfare assistance	Poor population (living below the nationally defined poverty line, all ages)
Child welfare	Children aged 0-14 years
Assistance to the elderly	Older persons
Disability benefits	Persons with disabilities
Active labor market programs	Unemployed and underemployed

Notes: For some countries, the actual groups differ from the Social Protection Indicator (SPI)-prescribed groups. In some instances, countries adjust the target group based on their local definition, making some of the results way above the “normal” values compared with other countries. Take pensions. The SPI elderly population comprises those aged 60 and above, but in some countries, like Bangladesh, Cambodia, and the People’s Republic of China, the pension age starts earlier. Similarly, in the Kyrgyz Republic, child welfare assistance extends up to secondary-level students, some of whom are likely to be more than 14 years old.

Source: ADB. 2011. The Revised Social Protection Index: Methodology and Handbook. Manila.

Methodology for Deriving the Indicators

Using 2015 data, this report draws on the methodology set out in ADB (2011), which provides a detailed explanation of defining and constructing the SPI and key data sources.

The information required for the analysis falls into two general categories: basic statistics and indicators; and data on social protection expenditure and on the number of socia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Tables, Figures, and Boxes
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Executive Summary
• 1 Overview and Methodology
• 2 Countries’ Spending on Social Protection—General Results
• 3 Social Protection Spending by Category and Program
• 4 Coverage and Benefit Size of Social Protection
• 5 Poverty and Gender Dimensions of Social Protection Spending
• 6 Changes in Social Protection Expenditure between 2009 and 2015
• 7 Conclusions
• Appendix
• References
• Footnotes
• Back Cover