Adaptive Social Protection Agenda : Lessons from Responses to COVID-19 Shock

The paper examines the social protection response to the COVID-19 pandemic across 76 emerging and developing economies (EDEs) to identify lessons on how to make these systems more resilient against risks, shocks, and crises at the individual, household, or national level. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered significant expansions in social protection systems across EDEs, with responses varying based on countries’ existing infrastructure and income levels. The analysis of 76 EDEs revealed that countries used approximately 37 percent of their social protection programs to respond to COVID-19, with social assistance programs being the most frequently used response (73 percent of total programs). EDEs increased their real per capita social protection spending by an average of 28 percent, with low-income countries (LICs) and high-income countries (HICs) showing the largest increases at around 40 percent and 32 percent, respectively. The effectiveness of responses was strongly correlated with preexisting social protection systems, economic conditions, labor market factors, and digital infrastructure. Countries with more developed social protection systems, formal labor markets, and digital payment infrastructure before the pandemic were better positioned to rapidly scale up their responses, highlighting the importance of maintaining robust routine social protection programs and delivery systems to enable effective crisis response.