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Public works and employment
programmes: towards a long term
development approach for social
protection and the delivery of assets
and services
Long-Term Social Protection for Inclusive Growth:
A Policy Dialogue and Learning Event,
Johannesburg, October 12, 2010
Radhika Lal
International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth
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Current Context:
 Slowdown of the world economy:
 Financial fragility;
 Fluctuations in exports;
 Volatility in commodity prices;
 Difficulties in ensuring a recovery in jobs;
 Some countries had a ‘jobs crisis’ even before the

current economic crisis…
Differential country experiences in weathering the crisis:
 All other things being equal, some countries appear to
have been able to mitigate impacts because of (long
term) social assistance measures which were already in
place (e.g. Brazil, India)
 Interest in results-based innovations in social assistance
programmes that can be easily expanded and can address
emerging public good deficits;
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Conventional Short-Term Policy Options
Scaling up cash
transfers
Effective though it may be difficult to scale up quickly unless a
single registry for social programmes has information on the
entirety of the low-income population (i.e. both beneficiaries and
non-beneficiaries), and the ‘cut-off’ point can be increased to
allow more "vulnerable" people to enter;
Subsidies to the May result in a ‘substitution’ so its not clear how many ‘new’
jobs will be created and how many ‘retained’;
private sector
to hire workers
ALMP &
Training
schemes
Important to upgrade skills; on-job training is best but the
private sector unlikely to have an incentive to skill people when
demand is stagnant.
Promoting
labor market
flexibility
What is efficient on the microeconomic scale (enterprise level)
may be counter-productive on the macroeconomic scale (if it does
not stimulate higher investment or increase export demand)
Microfinance
Recent studies point to a limited impact on poverty - not all
young people, and of the unemployed in general, have the
potential to be entrepreneurs;
Infrastructure
programmes
Impact on employment depends upon labor intensity
Public works
The quality of assets and longer term impacts on poverty are
likely to be an issue unless there is a focus on these issues.
Medium term policies
Need for a longer-term development perspective in response to the crisis:
 Public policies to re-ignite investment for transformational and
inclusive growth;
 Priority assigned to livelihood diversification, social upgrading
and skill development for selected sectors ;
 Investment in social protection programmes that go beyond safety
nets;
 Address deficits in infrastructure, social services, and demand
which have detrimental impacts on the conditions for re-igniting
growth and limiting adverse impacts on human capital;
However, ensuring scalable and sustainable investment in social
protection has been difficult for many countries in the region.. and the
crisis has cut into the fiscal space available…
 Making the linkages between growth and social protection and,
more specifically, between the productive dimensions of social
protection and the real economy productive policies could help…
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Medium-long-term structural transformation policies


Development transformations are key for sustainability of growth,

Transformation is a continuous process which requires a focus on
learning, productive experience, virtuous institutional interlinkages and stimulation of demand; it takes time and
experimentation;
Innovation and transformation involves creative destruction
(including of jobs), thus there is a need to:
 facilitate cross-sectoral mobility and skills upgrading;
 explicitly foster innovation to address the needs of more labour
intensive sectors/segments – particularly in rural areas - and to
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foster delivery platforms for services aimed at the poor ;

Without a forward looking focus on innovation, countries can be
locked into production and exports of minerals, primary
commodities and simple processing activities which make them
vulnerable to competition and generate too few resources for
economic and social upgrading and for the creation of good jobs.
Employment centered social protection programmes:
Safety nets or pathways out of poverty?
•
While public employment programmes can (rightly)
be viewed as a symptom of the employment deficit in
the economy they can also provide a platform for
innovation and help to underpin investments in
service delivery and asset creation under-served
areas….and serve as a transitional mechanism for the
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creation of jobs
Public Employment Programmes (PEPs): an overview
 Conventionally, public works have long been considered a staple of
social assistance programmes with the objective of short-term
consumption smoothing and insurance functions;
 Two traditions:
 Public works have long been organized in situations of drought or to
combat seasonal unemployment by providing short-term
employment on labor-intensive projects such as road construction,
maintenance, small-scale irrigation and water conservation works;
 Public works have also been designed as workfare programmes in the
context of short-term ‘safety nets’ to address temporary job-losses;
However,
 viewing work only as a conditionality for payment works against a focus
on value of assets and services provided;
 Short term safety net approach works against the development of
programme capacities and synergies with complementary programmes;
 New approaches point to multi-year funding frameworks and include
rights-based programmes and guarantees…
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Role of public employment programmes
PEPs can play a ‘bridging role’ with regard to:
• Addressing deficits in the provision of services and potentially
providing a pathway to better jobs;
• Fostering investment in assets and services relevant for the poor
and under-served areas;
• Ensuring stabilization of demand and incomes relevant for
economic resilience;
• Providing a platform for innovation in the delivery of services
If so, PEPs need to be linked to
•
Macro-economic and structural transformation policies to promote
employment-rich inclusive growth;
•
Policies to enhance employability, training and skills development
•
Promotion of private sector development and entrepreneurship
These linkages are easier to foster when there is a long-term
development framework for employment programmes
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Promotional Social Protection: Important to
recognize inter-linkages and hybrid nature of PEPs
Labor Markets:
Reduction in
working poverty
through potential
impact on wage
levels and
number of days
worked
Promotion of
Livelihood
Opportunities
(through a long-term
development
approach)
Human Capital:
consumption
smoothing and
support to
investments in
human capital
Assets and services:
1st and 2nd round
impacts on livelihoods,
increased viability of
self-employment and
investments in human
capital
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Public Employment Programmes: Issues




Useful asset creation requires a focus on assets and work
not just creation of work (workfare), technical capacity
(that can be built over the long term), accountability and
participatory inputs.
In many cases the problem is high levels of working
poverty coupled with high wage levels for a few; hence
there is a role for the employment guarantee in setting a
wage floor;
Impact on private sector is mixed: they gain from local
demand for their products while experiencing some
potential increases in wage costs and competition for
workers;
Both the private sector and society at large can benefit
from the work experience gained as well as from the
training (and/or education support) received by
beneficiaries of public employment programmes.
Recent Innovations in Rethinking Design/Role of PEPs
 Go beyond a focus on cash for work to focus on job creation and
useful asset and service provision
 Multi-year funding and implementation frameworks
 Multiple focus areas: conventional infrastructure and social services
(EPWP) and natural resource management (EPWP, MGNREGA);
 Catalytic Social Information and Delivery Systems: Can be deployed for
complementary programmes and can help to catalyze service provision in
other-wise under-served areas – e.g. financial and digital inclusion; ;
 Strong Transparency and accountability frameworks – useful for other
programmes and empowerment for social justice;
 Facilitate a shift from stand-alone to complementary programming
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MGNREGA (India) : Service Delivery
Platform & Innovation

Rights based framework making the state
legally accountable for providing work (100
days/rural HH);

Decentralized implementation with technical
support and participatory selection of projects;

Mandates use of IT infrastructure: this can also
foster businesses and digital inclusion.

Mandates payment through post offices/banks,
allows for banking correspondents and
provides a platform to test biometricallyenabled micro-payments via linkage to UID;

Mandates Social audits by the implementing
agency and allows for civil society role;
MGNREGA has had impacts on the
transparency and accountability of other poverty
reduction programmes;

Can be combined with sectoral initiatives
through ‘convergence’ programmes to increase
quality of assets and services;
Source: Fabio Veras 2009
NREGA Results to date
Employment & Labour
Market Impacts
Assets, Services and
productivity
improvements
Income
Increase in Agriculture
Minimum Wages, wages
earned/day & annual
income. (Source: IIM
Lucknow, NDUAT Faizabad)
•Financial Inclusion:
8.8 crore accounts
opened;
•Improvement in ground
water (Source: ASCI,
IHD)
•Reduction in water
vulnerability indexes: for
water , agriculture, and
livelihoods (Source:
IISc)
•Improved agricultural
productivity & cropping
intensity (Source: ASCI,
IIT Roorkee)
Increase in earnings/ HH:
2006-07: Rs. 2795
2007-08: Rs. 3150
2008-09: Rs. 4060
Livelihood diversification in
rural areas (Source: IIM
Shillong, CSE, IHD)
Source: Amita Sharma (2010)
Supplementary income
source during nonagricultural seasons
(Source: IIM
Ahmedabad) visible
decline in levels of
distress migration
(Source: Disha, NFIW,
IHD, CSE)
EPWP (South Africa): Green Jobs for the Poor and
Provision of early childhood development
EPWP Social Sector
•
The social sector had an innovative focus on early
childhood development (ECD) and community
home-based care (CBHC) to create jobs while
providing services to “reach infants, young
children, and the sick members of vulnerable
households.”
•
These services help alleviate unpaid care burdens
by providing support for the raising of children
and the care of the ill. (Antonopoulos)
EPWP environment sector:
E.g. Working for Water program which aimed to
enhance water security, restore the productive
potential of land and promote sustainable use of
natural resources and invest in marginalised
sectors of South African society
Selected Sources


Amita Sharma (2010) “Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act,
2005 A Rights based Law for inclusive growth” http://www.ipcundp.org/pressroom/files/ipc130.pdf
Maikel Lieuw-Kie-Song and Kate Philip, (2010) “Mitigating a Jobs Crisis: Innovations in Public
Employment Programmes (IPEP)” ILO Employment Sector, Employment Report No.6
www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed.../wcms_142973.pdf

Maikel Lieuw-Kie-Song (2009) “Green Jobs for the Poor: A Public Employment Approach”
http://content.undp.org/go/cms-service/download/publication/?version=live&id=1847980

Maikel Lieuw-Kie-Song and Radhika Lal (2010) “Green Jobs for the Poor: Why a Public
Employment Approach is Needed Now”

Radhika Lal, Steve Miller, Maikel Lieuw-Kie-Song, and Daniel Kostzer (2010) “ Public
Works and Employment Programmes: Towards a Long-Term Development Approach”
www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCWorkingPaper66.pdf

Rania Antonopoulos, 2009. "Promoting Gender Equality through Stimulus Packages and
Public Job Creation-- Lessons Learned from South Africa’s Expanded Public Works
Programme," Economics Public Policy Brief Archive ppb_101

Smita Gupta (2007) “The Significance And Limitations Of India’s National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act In Addressing Rural Poverty”
www.networkideas.org/ideasact/jun07/Beijing.../Smita_Gupta.ppt
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