Social protection and the labour market: Towards a research agenda

Abstract

Social policies should be seen as being an investment in human resources, but the mainstream of economics largely sees social spending as at best a residual necessity and at worst as wasteful spending. In a wide variety of influential approaches, including social risk management and value chain analysis, there are unrealistic estimations of poorer workers' abilities to themselves provide cover against work-related risks. The article identifies some elements for a future research agenda that would acknowledge the differentiation and segmentation in the labour market, explore how to make owners of capital more responsible to those who produce for them; give informal workers greater access to existing mainstream financial and insurance programmes; and include local government and local infrastructural development as elements in social policy. Special measures are needed to mitigate the economic impact of AIDS on the security of informal workers. © Institute of Development Studies.