ILO: COVID-19 as the opportunity to accelerate building universal social protection systems

The ILO’s released two briefs this week:

• Social protection responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in developing countries: Strengthening resilience by building universal social protection
• Sickness benefits during sick leave and quarantine: Country responses and policy considerations in the context of COVID-19

Key findings are:

• The COVID-19 crisis has exposed devastating gaps in social protection coverage in developing countries, and recovery will only be sustained and future crises prevented if they can transform their ad hoc crisis response measures into comprehensive social protection systems
• 55 per cent of the world’s population – as many as four billion people – are not covered by social insurance or social assistance. Globally, only 20 per cent of unemployed people are covered by unemployment benefits, and in some regions the coverage is much lower
• Social protection is “an indispensable mechanism for delivering support to individuals during the crisis.” Response measures countries have introduced include removing financial barriers to quality health care, enhancing income security, reaching out to workers in the informal economy, protecting incomes and jobs, and improving the delivery of social protection, employment and other interventions
• When it comes to sickness benefit coverage, the COVID-19 health crisis has exposed two main adverse effects of gaps in this coverage: (1) protection gaps can force people to go to work when they are sick or should self-quarantine, increasing the risk of infecting others, and (2) the related loss of income increases the risk of poverty for workers and their families
• The ILO suggests that governments extend sickness benefit coverage to all, with particular attention given to reaching women and men in non-standard and informal employment, the self-employed, migrants and vulnerable groups. Other recommendations include increasing benefit levels to ensure they provide income security, speeding up benefit delivery, and expanding the scope of benefits to include prevention, diagnosis and treatment measures, as well as time spent in quarantine or on the care of sick dependants

“The COVID-19 crisis is a turning point. It has revealed once again the devastating consequences of systemic shocks for societies and economies in the absence of universal and adequate social protection. Although the virus does not discriminate between rich and poor, its effects are highly uneven. Those who are better off are more likely to have secure employment and savings to draw on and access to social protection and health coverage, and are better able to quarantine themselves while continuing to work remotely. The highly uneven impacts and outcomes of the crisis within and across countries will thus result in increasing inequalities.”                      

ILO, Social protection responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in developing countries: Strengthening resilience by building universal social protection (ILO, May 2020)