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Risks, Needs and Rights: Compatible or Contradictory Bases for Social Protection

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Social Protection for the Poor and Poorest

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Development ((PSD))

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Abstract

Justifications for the welfare state in general, and for social protection and the attack on chronic poverty in particular, have traditionally come from three sources: an analysis of uninsurable risks and other market failures; doctrines of human rights – specifically, economic and social rights; and needs-based doctrines. The risk school emphasises failures in insurance markets, specifically the inability of private and communal insurance mechanisms to provide cover against all forms of risk, often due to asymmetrical or incomplete information. These important failures in insurance markets are compounded by other failures in markets for labour, credit and human capital. The social and economic rights school focuses on the obligations of the state derived from the assertion that citizens possess social and economic rights that are legally enforceable claims on the state. These rights are usually said to be defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN 1948) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UN 1996a), among other sources of international law, and are frequently asserted as coming from natural law. The needs-based doctrine stresses the practical and moral importance for poor and non-poor alike of eliminating (or at least alleviating or reducing) chronic poverty, and asserts both moral and economic claims in favour of social protection measures.

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Authors
  1. Lauchlan T. Munro
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Brooks World Poverty Institute, University of Manchester, UK

    Armando Barrientos (Professor and Research Director) & David Hulme (Professor of Development Studies, Director of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre and Co-Director) (Professor and Research Director) &  (Professor of Development Studies, Director of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre and Co-Director)

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© 2008 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Munro, L.T. (2008). Risks, Needs and Rights: Compatible or Contradictory Bases for Social Protection. In: Barrientos, A., Hulme, D. (eds) Social Protection for the Poor and Poorest. Palgrave Studies in Development. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-0-230-58309-2_2

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