Social Policy Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis and the Road Ahead

Abstract

Aside from the health challenge, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought an unprecedented social crisis to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). To avoid a humanitarian disaster, governments across the region have responded with a marked expansion of social protection measures. These, however, vary greatly with regard to speed, breadth, and sufficiency. People cannot stay at home if they cannot feed their families. Governments recognised at varying speeds that income assistance measures are central to an effective epidemiological strategy. Both the lockdown measures and the associated economic crises have highlighted the gaps in existing social protections in Latin America, as half of the region's employed population works in the informal sector. Many of these workers lost their income virtually overnight. To cover the needs of informal workers, the most effective governments established relatively inclusive eligibility criteria for cash assistance that allowed low-income households to self-identify and apply. The result is an extended registry that has expanded state capacity, on which further social protection policies can build. The region's two largest economies, Mexico and Brazil, have both suffered high pandemic-related infection and mortality rates, but sharply differ in their social policy approach. The left-wing Mexican government stands out for not establishing any nationwide cash assistance programme in the wake of COVID-19. By contrast, Brazil underwent a massive, opposition-driven expansion of social protection coverage, which eventually boosted the right-wing government's approval ratings among the poor. This year's Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the World Food Programme on 9 October recognizes the fundamental human need for sustenance. The social protection floors that were established ad hoc in the course of the COVID-19 crisis in Latin America need to now be extended to ensure that families can continue to feed themselves. The policy expansion efforts of the crisis could be used as an opportunity to overcome the deficiencies of Latin America's social security schemes and to build a more universal social protection floor for the longer term.