Protecting The Poor 3 The Social Protection Perspective On Microinsurance

Comprises a collection of papers on the provision of microinsurance to the poor by focusing on life and health insurance.

Annotation This volume views community-based microinsurance as an incremental first step to improved financial protection and better access to health services for the poor. While community-based financing can be structured in various ways, this volume focuses on reinsurance as a mechanism for improving micro-level health insurance units. It outlines strategies and policies that can be applied by countries and donors to improve access to health care services.

Many informal sector employees in developing and emerging countries lack access to reliable forms of social protection: They cannot afford to buy private insurance, they are not covered by social insurance, and they are not entitled to social assistance. Therefore, micro-insurance schemes have built up in many countries to fill the gap and reduce the vulnerability of people in the informal sector. The question is how much micro-insurance can do in this regard: To what degree can micro-insurance contribute to close the gap in social protection coverage in developing and emerging countries? And is it always the best instrument to close the gap? Or are other instruments more effective and efficient in this regard - for example the extension of social insurance or social assistance coverage? The article argues that a systemic perspective on social protection is crucial for analysing the potential of micro-insurance. Micro-insurance is no substitute for social transfers, which are financed by taxes and intended to support the most poor and vulnerable in society. In addition, it is normally not superior to social insurance (especially regarding risks such as illness, old age etc.) as long as both instruments are realistic options, i.e. where there is both, a political will and the necessary capability of the state to build up efficient and equitable social insurance schemes for low-income households. Nevertheless, the potential for micro-insurance is huge in most developing countries because many governments lack the political will or the capabilities to establish public social protection schemes. Many others are also not able to provide comprehensive social protection against every negative effect of all relevant risks for each and every household in a country. And micro-insurance can always be an effective instrument to cover risks that are not coverered by public social insurance schemes.

This exciting and innovative Handbook provides readers with a comprehensive and globally relevant overview of the instruments, actors and design features of social protection systems, as well as their application and impacts in practice. It is the first book that centres around system building globally, a theme that has gained political importance yet has received relatively little attention in academia.

This publication considers the range of financing options available for the design of cost-effective and equitable social welfare systems, giving a thorough analysis of their advantages and disadvantages and their financial and economic implications. Written by practitioners for practitioners, the book discusses the design and maintenance of national social protection systems that seek to ensure effective and efficient use of available resources at the community, national and international levels while supporting long-term economic development. The book explores theoretical and practical policy questions, as well as looking at the policy process that determines the affordable levels of and scope of social protection in a given country.

Volume numbers determined from Scope of the guidelines, p. 12-13.

Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

This two-volume guide provides assitance for a process of monitoring and evaluating the microinsurance schemes. It provides managers a assisting tool during such process for their microinsurance schemes. It also allows stakeholders - both technical and financial - to evaluate the vialability and performance of such schemes.

'Economic losses from natural disasters totaled $92 billion in 2015.' Such statements, all too commonplace, assess the severity of disasters by no other measure than the damage inflicted on buildings, infrastructure, and agricultural production. But $1 in losses does not mean the same thing to a rich person that it does to a poor person; the gravity of a $92 billion loss depends on who experiences it. By focusing on aggregate losses—the traditional approach to disaster risk—we restrict our consideration to how disasters affect those wealthy enough to have assets to lose in the first place, and largely ignore the plight of poor people. This report moves beyond asset and production losses and shifts its attention to how natural disasters affect people’s well-being. Disasters are far greater threats to well-being than traditional estimates suggest. This approach provides a more nuanced view of natural disasters than usual reporting, and a perspective that takes fuller account of poor people’s vulnerabilities. Poor people suffer only a fraction of economic losses caused by disasters, but they bear the brunt of their consequences. Understanding the disproportionate vulnerability of poor people also makes the case for setting new intervention priorities to lessen the impact of natural disasters on the world’s poor, such as expanding financial inclusion, disaster risk and health insurance, social protection and adaptive safety nets, contingent finance and reserve funds, and universal access to early warning systems. Efforts to reduce disaster risk and poverty go hand in hand. Because disasters impoverish so many, disaster risk management is inseparable from poverty reduction policy, and vice versa. As climate change magnifies natural hazards, and because protection infrastructure alone cannot eliminate risk, a more resilient population has never been more critical to breaking the cycle of disaster-induced poverty.