Conceptualising shock-responsive social protection

Abstract

"Social protection is intrinsically intended to be shock-responsive in that it should support people in the event of a shock or help to mitigate their susceptibility to shocks. We consider that the concept of a 'shock-responsive social protection system'—one that can respond flexibly in the event of an emergency—refers implicitly to covariate shocks, those that affect large numbers of people and/or communities at once, rather than the idiosyncratic shocks such as the death of a breadwinner that may affect individual households or household members". (…)