**1. Introduction**

### **1.1 Social protection and poverty in Bangladesh**

Bangladesh is one of the world's most densely populated countries where 1063 person live in each square kilometer of land [1]. Ever since its independence, Bangladesh has been known as one of the world's poorest countries although recently the country has transformed into lower middle income one [2]. Every year the country has been facing problems of flood, deforestation due to over population, erosion and natural calamities. The earliest Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) in 1973/74 showed that 71% population lived below the poverty line. However, the picture changed quite significantly with the pace

of time. Poverty reduction in Bangladesh has been significant but modest since the 1990s. The poverty trend shows notable progress, it was 52%, 44% and 31.5% in 2000, 2005 and 2010, respectively. Although poverty rate declined by 1.7% per annum at national level, currently still 23.5% of households in the country live in poverty [3]. That means, a total of 37.6 million people is still poor including 19.4 million extreme poor [4]. Gini Co-efficient was 0.458 in 2010 compared to 0.467 in 2005, indicating little improvement in income inequality [5]. Despite Bangladesh's remarkable progress of lifting 16 million people out of poverty in the past decade, poverty remains a stubborn problem. The most crucial challenge threatening Bangladesh is eliminating this widespread poverty. However, the government is strongly committed to reducing poverty and lowering inequality. This commitment is reflected in Vision 2021 through the Perspective Plan of Bangladesh 2010–2021 where poverty will be drastically reduced, citizens will be able to meet every basic need and development will be on fast track with accelerated rate of economic growth through social protection and social inclusion of marginal people in its development effort. Moreover, the government in its development agenda aspires to transform Bangladesh economy to a middle-income country by 2021. With this end in view, the government has predominantly emphasized poverty eradication in its development strategy to reduce the poverty rate from 23.5% in 2016 to 15% by 2021.

In this regard, Bangladesh has found many kinds of mechanisms and strategies. Social protection program is one of mechanisms and strategies. Social protection is an essential government investment that contributes to economic growth and makes growth more pro-poor and inclusive through directly reducing poverty. Social protection encompasses the instruments which has been used to tackle chronic and shock induced poverty and vulnerability of the poor and marginalized population. Social protection facilitates the poor to cope with shocks to their incomes by improving coverage, timeliness and scale. Social protection also strengthens disaster prevention and mitigation strategies. In addition, social protection includes social insurance such as health insurance as well as labor market programs [2].

Social protection programs are crucial part of Bangladesh's poverty reduction strategies. In this regard, major policy documents such as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Seventh Five Year Plan (7FYP) and previously, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers recognize the importance of social protection programs in supporting livelihoods and food security of the poor and also protect the poor households from poverty and vulnerability. The government of Bangladesh (GoB) aims to develop various kinds of effective social protection policies and programs to address poverty and vulnerability of its population and allocated around US\$ 3 billion to support these programs [6]. These programs include safety nets, social insurance (e.g., pensions, unemployment) and labor market programs [7]. All these social protection programs intend to facilitate education, health, vulnerability reduction, employment creation, risk reduction etc. [8].

#### *1.1.1 Policies and progress to date: social protection and safety net programs (SNPs)*

As a protective mechanism for the poor, social protection has a long history since Ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire. The concept was later popularized in East Asia during the financial crisis [9]. In the context of the developing world, social protection is relatively a new term that expands from the concept of short-term safety net programs and emphasizes a longer-term development approach, which includes social assistance and insurance [10].

*Landscape of Enhanced Access to Social Protection, Safety Nets and Increased Resilience… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99270*

Bangladesh, after liberation in 1971, was desperately poor, vulnerable, and densely populated with an agrarian economy subject to frequent natural disasters. Therefore, eliminating widespread poverty was the most crucial challenge. Only two programs e.g. food rations and relief works were considered as social safety net programs for preventing the poverty as well as shocks of the victims. In response to the devastating famine of 1974, the first round of innovations took place, the World Food Program (WFP) initiated the Vulnerable Group Feeding (VGF) Program in 1975 due to 1974 famine in Bangladesh [11]. At that time food-for-work was momentously scaled-up and the Grameen experiment with micro-credit took off. Second round of innovation took place in the late 1980s. The response to consecutive floods of 1987 and 1988, there were these two innovations. Workfare innovation that combining goals of road maintenance, social forestry and women empowerment were launched at that time. Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) were launched in the form of food-for-education program in the early 1990s. School enrolment and attainment among children was quite low, especially among girls at the secondary level until the early 1990s. In the late 1990s allowance programs took off focusing on elderly and vulnerable women. During the 1990s, there was significant investment by donors in various programs managed by NGOs, provided a range of social services, including social transfers. The programs were broadening with focus to combine 'protection' and 'promotion' goals in early 2000s. In the late 2000s,




*Landscape of Enhanced Access to Social Protection, Safety Nets and Increased Resilience… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99270*

#### **Table 1.**

*Evolution of social protection and social safety net in Bangladesh.*

a prominent focus was geographic targeting. Until 2002, cash for education program was named as a food for education. In 2002, this program was terminated and replaced by the Primary Education Stipend Program (PESP). Now the objectives of this PESP are to increase enrolment from poor families, reduce drop-out, increase rate of completion, control child labor and raise quality of primary education [12].

However, according to the classification used by the Ministry of Finance of the GoB, the major social SNPs in Bangladesh are divided under two broad categories: (i) social protection measures; (ii) social empowerment measures. By another typology, SNPs can be also divided into four broad categories: (i) employment generation programs, (ii) programs to cope with natural disasters and other shocks, (iii) incentives to parents for children's education, and (iv) incentives to the families to improve their living status. These four broad categories can be divided into two types on the basis of mode of payment: (a) cash transfer, including conditional cash transfer (Food-for-Education Program, PESP, Female Secondary School Assistance Project, Old Age Allowance (OAA), and Rural Maintenance Program (RMP)); and (b) food transfer (Food-for Work Program, Vulnerable Group Development (VGD) Program, VGF Program, Test Relief (TR) and Gratuitous Relief (GR)) [13]. The general progression of social protection and safety net has been portrayed in **Table 1** with the contextually relevant factors.

Past mechanism/delivery system was not fully appropriate for the real poor people. For example, land criteria, were widely used to distinguish between the poor and the non-poor but evidence from the HIES suggests these criteria could lead to significant misallocation of resources. Land ownership by itself, then, was not an especially useful criterion. Ahmed [15] found that almost 47% of beneficiaries of the PESP were non-poor and incorrectly included. However, the criteria may not be appropriate and can lead to exclusion errors – i.e., some poor are classified as non-poor and cannot gain access to the programs. Programs are captured by elite members in the community who select beneficiaries and can crowd out voiceless members of the community. Using the Food for Education program as an example, [16] found considerable evidence of local capture e.g. the benefits were less likely to reach those who came from female headed, widowed or landless families. Moreover, the women concerned held major assets prior to joining VGD, had a diversified income and were more likely to have husbands with an income earning status.

Some recipients of the OAA appeared to be below the age of eligibility. False prioritization (high inclusion error) was found – excluded respondents reported that the selection process was not proper. Some percentage of beneficiaries had to adopt unfair means to be inducted in the program and in some cases, they received less than the allotted amount. A PERC report showed that a large part of budgetary allocation for the female secondary stipend program (about 20–40%) did not reach to the beneficiaries. There was weak capacity to both administer and monitor the system – often leading to leakages and inefficient targeting of beneficiaries.

However, the ministries recognize that their staff – and local government staff – needs significant capacity development to be able to manage schemes effectively and properly. In this regard, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) has taken an endeavor to establish a Bangladesh Poverty Database using the Proxy Means Test approach. Monetizing benefits is already an important development in Bangladesh. Recently, the mobile banking plays an important role for the poor village people, it gives them easy access to the allocated money. Moreover, the voucher program and 'Food Card' managed by the Ministry of Food, being piloted to reduce maternal/ child mortality, provide an immediate transfer to the poor. Households targeted based on criteria that are most closely related to occupation and income are more effective than those selected on the basis of assets such as land. Besides, in case of conditional cash transfer, cash is being transferred to beneficiaries' guardians/ beneficiaries bank accounts. In case of emergency or seasonal relief, food transfer by the public food distribution system and in case of public works or training-based cash or in-kind transfer, food transferred by the public food distribution system and cash transferred by the public sector banks are some of the special arrangements.

In this era of digital technology automated system can maintain and regularly update the Social Safety Nets beneficiaries by program and transfers payments which can simplify SSS implementation, lower transaction costs, and minimize corruption. There is no database of beneficiaries. In the recent past the government is taking necessary steps to effectively manage and monitor the social security programs and strengthening the delivery systems for priority transfers by establishing advanced MIS and trained professional staff. Besides, the government is expanding the awareness of the social security programs for the beneficiaries and motivating potential contributors.

#### *1.1.2 Coverage of social protection and social safety net programs in Bangladesh and adopting life cycle approach in NSSS*

A variety of the social safety net programs are being implemented in many countries across the world to sever the underserved people as means of 'protection' as well as 'promotion' [17]. In Bangladesh due to the high incidence of shocks and the large number of vulnerable populations, the government has raised social safety net expenditure since the mid-1990s. Annual outlay on safety net programs amounted to US\$ 1.64 billion which was approximately 1.6% of national GDP in 2011 [18]. In the national budget of 2016–2017, the government allocated 2.19% of GDP for social protection.

#### *1.1.2.1 Life cycle approach*

The approaches of social protection are poor relief approach, lifecycle approach and social risk management approach of the World Bank. The poor

#### *Landscape of Enhanced Access to Social Protection, Safety Nets and Increased Resilience… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99270*

relief approach is a short-term planning striving to resolve poverty immediately by investing limited per capita resources. It was started from Europe in 19th century and later spread out in some developing countries including Bangladesh. Due to large targeting errors and small budgets it has no focus on comprehensively tackling poverty. The World Bank developed social risk management approach (SRM) for protecting basic livelihood and promoting risk taking extending social protection to include prevention, mitigation and coping strategies focusing on the poor and vulnerable people in the 1990s. The lifecycle approach reflects that individuals face different risks and vulnerabilities at different stages in life. It has been designed to address risks at each stage providing basic social protection to citizens from the cradle to the grave. This approach was adopted some European countries like Sweden in the twentieth century and was introduced UK in 1945 and subsequently used across developed countries and also in a range of developing countries. The approach focuses resources on particular lifecycle risks in a more comprehensive manner with long term planning and programmes. Bangladesh has adopted the lifecycle approach to social protection in the National Social Security Strategy (NSSS).

The social security systems innovated to address the risks and challenges associated with across the lifecycle. So, lifecycle approach provides a comprehensive framework of lifecycle of a human being and analyses the basic risks along with the cycle. The major stages in the lifecycle mapping of human being are early childhood, school age, youth, working age and old age. Besides, pregnancy period of women is a special stage of lifecycle. Based on the lifecycle mapping, most of the existing social security programmes of Bangladesh fit in the lifecycle framework even though this was not used explicitly as a strategic consideration. Thus, the lifecycle based social protection system is promoting to consolidate the fragmented social safety net programmes into lifecycle framework. The Action Plan Implementation of NSSS of Bangladesh under the guideline of NSSS has brought in a paradigm shift in the social security programmes of Bangladesh. The Action Plan delivers for the major social protection programmes to be aligned across a lifecycle framework. It has been planned to cover poor, near poor and vulnerable people to protect from the different types of shocks and disasters throughout the lifecycle including pregnant women and disables. The Action Plan for governance reforms incorporating agenda for strengthening systems of objective targeting based on poverty scores, formulation of a single registry integrated MIS, digital payment in the form of G2P, and results-based M&E [19].

A life cycle approach has been recognized as an effective means of building National Social Protection System by the World Bank [20] in its Social Protection and Labor Strategy document. A life cycle approach also underpins the approach of the Social Protection floor, which has been promoted by the United Nations and endorsed by many countries including Bangladesh [20]. The social protection floor sets out four basic social security guarantees for the elderly, people with disabilities, children and the unemployed. The SSSs of most countries gradually evolve to address the risks and challenges across the life span. An individual is being exposed to predictable or unexpected risks which vary in nature over the life course.

The poverty profile of Bangladesh in the life cycle approach is presented below:

#### *1.1.2.2 Pregnancy and early childhood*

Poverty rates in 2010 in households with children aged 0–4 years are - at 41.7%. This is much higher than national poverty rates which is 31.5% in 2010 and 24.3% using upper poverty line [21]. This indicating the challenges and additional expenses caused by having young children when mothers are unable to work and

earn. When the near poor are included, around 57% of households with children aged 0–4 years could be regarded as poor or vulnerable to poverty.
