How social protection helps people become self-reliant

As the world backtracks on reducing poverty, social protection can be key to helping people become more self-reliant. Social protection is not only about cash or in-kind support, such as a small supplemental income, a pension or food. It is also about supporting people with employment and economic inclusion programs to help them access opportunities, better jobs or make them more productive in what they do.

The new State of Social Protection Report 2025: The 2 Billion-Person Challenge, released today,  lays out how social protection and labor programs are helping to lift people out of poverty in developing countries. The report highlights social protection’s successes and how it can empower many more to thrive.

Today, more people have access to social protection than at any point in history.  In the past 10 years, social protection has expanded to cover a record 4.7 billion people in low- and middle-income countries. Three out of four people now live in households that either benefit from or contribute to social protection. And the expansion has been the largest in low-income countries, where coverage more than doubled.  

Thanks to social protection, when droughts and other shocks occur, beneficiaries in the Sahel now avoid a 24 percent drop in  spending on necessities such as food. They are also 25 percent less likely to reduce health and education spending.

Economic inclusion programs support people with cash, assets, training, and market access. These programs have increased household incomes or business revenues by up to 45 percent. 

But more work is needed. Despite the massive increases in coverage, progress remains slow. The report shows that 1.6 billion people in low- and middle-income countries are still not covered by any form of social protection, and 400 million more people remain severely under-covered. At current rates, it will take 20 more years to provide social protection to all the world’s poor.

In the report we outline three ways to speed up progress.

1. Expand coverage. This is not just about money. To expand coverage, we must build the infrastructure to grow social protection programs, such as the databases, digital payment systems, and case management systems required to identify people in need and support them in a timely and effective manner.

Developing these systems takes time. Large-scale programs such as Brazil’s Bolsa Familia or Pakistan’s Benazir Income Support Program took more than a decade to build—and they are still being perfected.

2. Increase the adequacy of the support provided. In many low-income countries, benefits are so low that they barely affect poverty. Low benefits force poor people to focus on survival and leave them little room to plan for their future.

People also require support that goes beyond cash or in-kind transfers, such as better social services to address domestic violence or mental health. And they urgently need more employment support to boost access to better jobs and help them become more self-reliant.

3. Build shock-responsive social protection systems. By investing in shock-responsive delivery systems, financing mechanisms, and governance arrangements, we can provide timely support and employment stability when shocks and crises occur.  These investments help social protection quickly and efficiently expand during times of shocks and crises.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency social protection responses reached 1.7 billion people in developing countries, demonstrating the importance of shock-responsive systems. Countries with robust delivery infrastructure prior to the pandemic responded more effectively, highlighting the need for proactive investment.

There is no question that more resources will be necessary, but in many countries better use of existing resources can also go a long way. For example, currently many cash transfers benefit the middle class or the rich. Redirecting them to benefit the poor could supply nearly half of the funding required to cover the bottom 20 percent of the population with social protection. 

At the World Bank, we have a target to reach 500 million more people, half of them women, with social protection by 2030. We can’t do this alone. We must work with governments and development partners to find the necessary resources and to manage them wisely. 

In a world undergoing rapid change, the cost of inaction will not only be measured in money, but also in the lost opportunities, deeper inequalities, and diminished resilience for generations to come.