Social risk

Social risk management (SRM) is a conceptual framework developed by the World Bank, specifically its Social Protection and Labor Sector under the leadership of Robert Holzmann, since the end 1990s. The objective of SRM is to extend the traditional framework of social protection to include prevention, mitigation, and coping strategies to protect basic livelihoods and promote risk taking. SRM focuses specifically on the poor, who are the most vulnerable to risk and more likely to suffer in the face of economic shocks. Through its strategies SRM aims to reduce the vulnerability of the poor and encourage them to participate in riskier but higher-return activities in order to transition out of chronic poverty.

Social Protection has been a part of OECD economies for a long time but it has not played much of a role in development work because the imitation of these measures in developing countries is criticized based on equity and efficiency trade-off arguments. This view changed as a result of the following policy, conceptual and institutional triggers that led to the creation of SRM as a new Social Protection framework:

There are three important categories that aid in the classification of sources of risks:

1. Catastrophic vs. non-catastrophic shocks: Some events occur with low frequency, but have severe income effects like old-age, death in the family, and disabling accidents or illnesses, permanent unemployment, and the technological redundancy of skills. These catastrophic events can hit households hard and may require a continuing flow of transfers to the affected household if it cannot acquire sufficient assets. On the other end of the scale are high frequency events with non-severe income effects like transient illness, crop loss, and temporary unemployment. Protection against these non-catastrophic events need not require long-term net transfers to the afflicted household. If appropriate mechanisms are available, households may use savings or loans with no net transfers from others over time.

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