How the World Bank Supports Adaptive Social Protection in Crisis Response
Overview
Key Messages
The evaluation focused on the World Bank’s support for social protection (SP) systems and these systems’ responses to shocks during FY 2012–22.
The World Bank has been a pioneer in conceptualizing such adaptive SP through diagnostics, analytics, and knowledge building.
In countries at high risk of shocks, the World Bank grew its SP lending sharply during the evaluated period, expanding into all Regions and country types and adding much support for adaptive program features in response to COVID-19. This focus was highly relevant for building strong SP systems.
World Bank–supported projects paid strong attention to regular program strengthening but gave inconsistent attention to grounding their designs in countries’ institutional arrangements and ensuring predictable financing.
Projects rarely measured the performance of SP systems in response to shocks.
Most countries expanded SP programs to respond to shocks. World Bank–supported vertical expansions were relatively timely, but countries often fell short in delivering adequate shock responses to new beneficiaries because of inaccurate targeting, data system incompatibility, and unpredictable financial resources.
SP systems performed better in slow-onset and recurrent shocks, such as droughts, than in sudden-onset, infrequent shocks, such as earthquakes or tropical storms, because slow-onset shocks have clearer institutional mandates, more comprehensive information systems, and well-established partnerships.
Mature systems with long-term World Bank support offered more robust shock responses. The World Bank used its contingent and emergency response financing instruments effectively, leading to swift disbursements for shock responses.
The key challenges for adaptive SP involve government commitment—shaped by policymakers’ belief and interest in SP, political incentives, presence of champions, and public support—fiscal space, absence of clear institutional mandates for SP, and coherence between SP and disaster risk management.
Shocks and crises pose significant threats to human development, disproportionately affecting poor and vulnerable households. These shocks—whether natural disasters, economic crises, or political upheavals—often force households to resort to negative coping strategies, such as pulling children out of school, selling assets, or going hungry. To address these challenges, social protection (SP) responses need to be tailored to both immediate and long-term needs. Adaptive social protection (ASP) emphasizes the role of SP systems in supporting households and communities in preparing for, responding to, and adapting to various types of shocks. The World Bank Group’s approach to ASP has evolved rapidly, becoming a key part of its support to help countries respond to shocks, emphasized in its recently updated Global Crisis Response Framework and Corporate Scorecard, among other initiatives.
Evaluation Scope
This independent evaluation assesses the relevance and effectiveness of the World Bank’s support in making SP systems more responsive to shocks through ASP. The evaluation provides evidence-based insights on how World Bank teams have integrated adaptive elements into operations and assesses the performance of these systems in response to shocks and crises. It focuses on social assistance and shock responses at the country level during FY 2012–22.
Overall, this report finds that the World Bank contributed to making SP systems more adaptive to shocks, but the performance of these systems during shocks was often inadequate because of limited financing, political economy challenges, and institutional shortcomings.
Building Adaptive Social Protection Systems
The World Bank has been a pioneer in conceptualizing ASP, significantly contributing through diagnostics, analytics, and knowledge building. The World Bank’s ASP framework advanced the conceptual understanding of the field by outlining the spectrum of activities necessary to enable SP systems to contribute effectively to shock responses, while also building consensus among key stakeholders in the development landscape. For example, the World Bank’s stress testing tool supports strategic planning for investments in SP systems to ensure their ability to respond to shocks.
Between FY12 and FY22, the World Bank initiated 155 country-focused advisory services and analytics activities in 40 out of the 70 countries covered by this evaluation. It also engaged in much joint learning with clients and partners.
The World Bank expanded its SP lending sharply during the evaluated period, committing $53 billion for operations in 67 out of the 70 high-risk countries selected for this evaluation (figure O.1). The portfolio became truly global, with a significant focus on low- and lower-middle-income countries and countries experiencing fragility, conflict, and violence (figure O.2). The World Bank’s support for adaptive and dual-use features of SP grew rapidly, especially in response to COVID-19 (figure O.3). Adaptive features are used solely for shock response, whereas dual-use features are necessary for both regular SP program delivery and shock response.
Figure O.1. The World Bank Sharply Expanded Its Social Protection Lending
Figure O.1. The World Bank Sharply Expanded Its Social Protection Lending
Source: Independent Evaluation Group portfolio review.
Figure O.2. The World Bank’s Social Protection Financing Tilted Toward Low-Income Regions
Figure O.2. The World Bank’s Social Protection Financing Tilted Toward Low-Income Regions
Source: Independent Evaluation Group portfolio review.
Note: N = 202 projects. AFE = Eastern and Southern Africa; AFW = Western and Central Africa; EAP = East Asia and Pacific; ECA = Europe and Central Asia; FCS = fragile and conflict-affected situations; LAC = Latin America and the Caribbean; MENA = Middle East and North Africa; SAR = South Asia.
Figure O.3. The World Bank Expanded Investments in Dual-Use and Adaptive Features
Figure O.3. The World Bank Expanded Investments in Dual-Use and Adaptive Features
Source: Independent Evaluation Group portfolio review.
The World Bank’s support primarily focused on strengthening regular programs and their management information systems (figure O.4). This focus broadly aligns with recommendations from the literature—readiness and capacity for scaling up SP national systems largely depend on preexisting programs and the robustness of their underlying data and delivery systems. The most frequently supported areas were program enhancements to existing safety net programs, followed by support for enhancing information systems and program expansions. Support for program expansions increased in response to COVID-19 because more than half of the projects approved in FY20 included adding beneficiaries (horizontal expansions), extending the duration of benefits (vertical expansions), or launching emergency programs. Projects often added these adaptive elements as part of the World Bank’s efforts to gradually strengthen SP systems.
The projects did not routinely support policy coherence and cross-sector coordination. SP operations sought to foster institutional links to disaster risk management (DRM) in 12 out of the 67 countries and the use of early-warning systems (EWSs) for setting thresholds or triggering SP responses in 10 out of the 67 countries.
Most cash transfers and public works programs prioritized women as beneficiaries but often lacked the necessary measures to be gender responsive, which means addressing the specific needs of women, or gender transformative, which means actively challenging and changing unequal gender relations. In a subsample of 50 projects, 75 percent were sensitive to gender issues, often in their targeting, but only 6 percent were gender transformative—that is, they aimed to transform unequal gender relations via changes in processes, access, and outcomes. Many projects lacked contextual analyses of the challenges faced by women and girls in project settings.
Figure O.4. Types of Support by Cluster Across Countries
Figure O.4. Types of Support by Cluster Across Countries
Source: Independent Evaluation Group portfolio review.
Triangulating across the evaluation’s literature review, portfolio review, and case studies, the evaluation highlights that the World Bank has made substantial and relevant efforts to address barriers to expanding social safety nets in response to shocks. However, challenges persist, such as incomplete data coverage in social registries and limited work on preplanned risk financing, affecting achievement of optimal results, as detailed in the next section.
Performance When Responding to Shocks
Measurement
Key outcomes of interest include reach, coverage in relation to needs, accuracy of targeting, adequacy of benefits, and timeliness of benefits. Limited measurement of key outcomes restricted the ability of the evaluation to fully assess the performance of SP systems in response to shocks. Regular programs routinely measure the number of beneficiaries reached and some other program outcomes, but few projects measured shock responses.
Outcomes
All 11 evaluation case study countries expanded their programs to respond to shocks at least once during the evaluated period. The World Bank’s support for financing program expansions and system strengthening, particularly for data and information systems, helped countries expand safety nets to address shocks.
However, countries often fell short in delivering adequate shock responses. In particular, countries struggled to quickly add new beneficiaries during crises. Coverage rates of affected populations were often below 10 percent—that is, only 10 percent of eligible people in Lebanon were receiving aid, 11 percent of households in the Philippines were reached through the SP system, 8 percent of displaced households in Pakistan were receiving cash for work, and 8 percent of people in the Dominican Republic were supported after a hurricane. Challenges with targeting, data interoperability, and financial readiness hindered program expansions.
At the time of shock, the World Bank used its contingent and emergency response financing instruments effectively to support the ASP portfolio. These instruments led to faster disbursements for SP responses from 2018 onward.
Unfortunately, fast disbursements did not always translate into timely payments to beneficiaries. Untimely payment delivery undermines the effectiveness of safety nets and presents a challenge for both regular and shock response programs. Whereas the evaluation found positive examples during the pandemic, the case studies documented delays of several years in some World Bank–supported shock responses, including in Mozambique and Pakistan. Manual payment processes and the need to contract financial service providers caused the delays.
Systems performed better in slow-onset, recurrent shocks—mostly droughts and recurrent lean seasons—than in sudden-onset shocks for reasons related to mandates, information systems, and partnerships. In slow-onset shocks, EWS helped anticipate the shocks’ impacts and locations well ahead; social registries, when they were up-to-date, contained the necessary information; the SP system often had a clear mandate to respond; and there were sometimes preexisting partnerships with humanitarian agencies.
Success Factors and Challenges
Political commitment is necessary to strengthen routine SP and prepare it for shock response. Political commitment also influences the fiscal space and determines the financial resources necessary to sustain countries’ commitments to ASP. The absence of sustained political commitment, sometimes linked to concerns about the fiscal sustainability and recurrent nature of such programs, was a major constraint to building adaptable SP systems in several case countries. Consequently, SP is sometimes largely donor funded, and some countries reverted to in-kind assistance outside established SP programs during crises.
The World Bank was able to advance ASP initiatives in countries where political and institutional interests favored cash-based assistance, but it had limited influence when entrenched interests favored in-kind assistance. Funding for shock response, in which the World Bank played a key role, was a strong enabler for building ASP systems and responding to shocks.
The fragmented institutional landscape for SP is a significant barrier to implementing effective ASP. Overlapping mandates and strained interinstitutional relationships within the government hindered the development of effective ASP in all case studies. The case studies found that the World Bank could have paid more attention to institutional arrangements.
Addressing covariate shocks requires close coordination among central and local government authorities, humanitarian agencies, and development partners. While interagency collaboration among the World Bank, clients, and development partners has improved, often enabled by World Bank staff presence in-country and trust fund resources, some case studies highlight missed opportunities.
The World Bank has made progress on internal collaboration between SP and some other sectors. Collaboration more often focused on payment systems than on ensuring predictable financing and effective integration of SP, DRM, and climate change adaptation. There are barriers to greater coherence between SP and DRM because they each have their own internal logic, intervention types, counterparts, and resources.
Conclusions
This evaluation finds that ASP remains a highly relevant focus area for SP and that the World Bank made significant knowledge and financing contributions that strengthened SP systems. All case study countries were able to expand their safety net programs to respond to various types of shocks. However, countries often fell short in delivering adequate shock responses, struggling to quickly add nonbeneficiaries during crises, sometimes reaching less than 10 percent of those affected by shocks and eligible, for reasons related to financing availability, political economy, and institutional capacity.
Technically, further work is needed to help prepare programs’ delivery systems and financing mechanisms to expand and measure the performance of SP systems in response to shocks. Institutionally, progress is needed to navigate countries’ institutional landscape, advance policy coherence and interinstitutional collaboration, improve collaboration between SP and DRM staff and agencies, and ensure reliable shock response financing.
This evaluation makes the following recommendations to prepare SP delivery systems for faster and more comprehensive coverage after shocks and to ensure that performance in delivering shock responses is systematically measured:
- Continue investing in system building and expanded coverage, focusing on program elements that serve both regular and shock-responsive functions. This could include the following.
Data and information systems:
- Expanding the coverage of social registries to include vulnerable populations, beyond existing beneficiaries, in both urban and rural areas.
- Linking EWSs with SP systems, with preidentified protocols and thresholds to trigger SP responses during shocks.
Predictable finance:
- Developing and implementing national disaster risk financing strategies that include prearranged funding mechanisms, such as contingency funds and insurance schemes, for more timely financial resources for ASP and to complement the World Bank’s emergency financing.
Leveraging more programs for shock response:
- Preparing social insurance, economic inclusion, and labor market programs to contribute to shock responses, aiming for more comprehensive coverage.
- Strengthen coordination between client government SP and DRM agencies, improve partnership with humanitarian agencies, and enhance internal collaboration within the World Bank for shock response. This could include the following.
Client governments:
- Supporting mechanisms for collaboration on shock response between clients’ SP and DRM agencies, grounded in improved understanding of agency mandates. The stress test tool could be updated to include recommendations for cross-sector collaboration.
- Ensuring the continuity of SP assistance in fragility, conflict, and violence contexts to foster social cohesion and mitigate some of the adverse effects of conflict, including for forcibly displaced populations.
Humanitarian agencies and partners:
- Strengthening the World Bank’s collaboration with humanitarian actors, especially on data, risk analysis, programs, and financing.
- Enhancing cooperation with partner organizations to allow flexibility and continuity of support in fragile contexts, for example via third-party implementation.
World Bank internal:
- Improving internal collaboration among World Bank teams from SP, DRM, and the Prosperity group on EWS, delivery systems, and financial preparedness. Consider incentivizing such collaboration through joint decision-making about trust fund allocations.
- Enhance the measurement of SP systems’ effectiveness in responding to shocks by setting performance targets, monitoring system performance with dynamic stress testing, and using the insights to guide future investments.
Performance targets:
- Define performance targets for shock preparedness and response that depend on SP systems’ maturity. This could extend ongoing data collection for the Bank Group Corporate Scorecard on the reach of safety nets to also include coverage, timeliness, and benefit adequacy.
Monitoring:
- Collaborate with partners to conduct periodic stress testing to monitor progress toward strengthened SP systems for shock responses. This would render the existing stress testing tool more dynamic and more collaborative.
Learning over time:
- Use this performance data for knowledge sharing across countries and for discussions of investment priorities, resource needs, and levels of ambition.