Social Protection As Development Policy: Asian Perspectives

Based on primary research in several countries in the Asia region, this volume provides fresh insights into the inter-related problems of poverty, vulnerability and social exclusion, as well as into efforts to address them.

Concerned that in the pre-2008 growth scenario, there was a danger that the lessons of the Asian crisis of the late 1990s would be forgotten, this volume underscores the need for policy makers to see social protection not only as a response to risk and crisis, but to integrate it into the mainstream development agenda in order to create trajectories out of poverty and vulnerability. Significantly, taking into account both deeply entrenched forms of poverty and social exclusion as well as new forms of vulnerability being created in the process of rapid growth and globalisation, it also cautions against a one-size-fits-all approach to social protection.

Sarah Cook is Director, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva and was formerly Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. From 2000-06 she was Programme Officer with the Ford Foundation in Beijing. Her research addresses issues related to the social impact of economic reform in China, including issues of social policy, employment and gender. She is currently directing a multi-country research programme on `Social Protection in Asia', and is engaged in comparative research on informal employment in China and India. She has published papers on social policy in East Asia, rural health reform in China, and social protection.
Naila Kabeer is Professional Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. She has extensive experience of research, training and advisory work in the field of gender, poverty and social policy. Her previous publications include Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought (1994), The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decisions in London and Dhaka (2000) and, more recently, Gender & Social Protection Strategies in the Informal Economy (Routledge 2010).