Abstract
This chapter serves as an introduction to provide background information on the social protection floor initiative and to outline the progress and constraints in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The context of globalization is provided, and the recent global financial crisis, which both influence the development of recent social protection initiatives. The chapter concludes with a rationale for social protection and presents the agreement on the nine United Nations joint initiatives.
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Notes
- 1.
Neoliberal monetary policies have emphasized the opening up of capital markets to external flows and keeping inflation rates low. Financial volatility and crises in developing countries affect the economy in terms of income decline, lower employment, increasing unemployment and underemployment, and shifts from formal to informal work. Recurring economic crises associated with financial liberalization have propelled many women into the labour force, and often into more precarious forms of work. Financial liberalization is one of the most controversial aspects of globalization because of its association with crises that have had negative effects on income and employment (Razavi et al. 2012).
- 2.
Unpaid care and reproductive work is crucial to the success of the ‘productive economy’ yet is not recognized in official labour market statistics or counted in GDP. Unpaid care work includes housework and caregiving of persons in homes and communities. It remains invisible in the economy that informs policy making (Razavi et al. 2012).
- 3.
The food price crisis is the result of increases in the price of staple foods that leads to a decrease in real income for vulnerable households.
- 4.
The working poor are employed but live in households where individual members live below the established measure of income poverty. Despite working, the working poor cannot earn enough to get out of poverty.
- 5.
In many cases the recovery is characterized with unemployment and underemployment at unacceptably high levels.
- 6.
Types of low carbon development include green economy and green lifestyle initiatives to reduce carbon emissions (McCulloch and Sumner 2009).
- 7.
Vulnerable employment is defined as less formal work arrangements that lack elements of decent work, such as social security, health benefits and recourse to social dialogue or effective collective bargaining mechanisms.
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Drolet, J.L. (2014). Background to the Social Protection Initiative. In: Social Protection and Social Development. SpringerBriefs in Population Studies. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7878-8_1
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