Promoting Universal Social Policy in MICs
Fecha
2020
Tipo
capítulo de libro
Autores
Martínez Franzoni, Juliana
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Resumen
Reducing poverty levels, improving the distribution of income and improving
people’s capabilities are three key challenges of economic development. Many
middle-income countries (MICs) have the state capacity and the resources needed
to confront these challenges—as evident in Hoy and Sumner’s discussion in
chapter 7. Yet they have generally failed to meet these goals, failing to successfully
provide healthcare, education, and income support to significant segments of the
population. How can this problem be resolved? How should social benefits be
provided in the MICs? Should services and transfers be for everyone or focus
exclusively on the poor?
This chapter provides answers to these questions. Following our previous work
and that of others, we argue that to be effective and successful, social policies
should be universal, providing the whole population with similar, generous transfers
and services (Martínez Franzoni and Sánchez-Ancochea, 2014a; Mkandawire,
2006a; Pribble, 2013).
Yet delivering universal social policies in a development context is easier said
than done. We propose to take a step back and distinguish between what we want to
achieve and how to achieve it. This requires separating the desired policy outputs
(coverage, generosity, and equity of benefits) from the specific ways to secure
them. To study the latter, we discuss the concept of the policy architecture: the
combination of instruments that define what specific benefits are being offered, to
whom, and how.
Choosing the desirable/feasible policy architecture—one that initially focuses
on the poor or one that departs from other groups of the population as well—is
both a technical and a political decision. When designing new architectures or
reforming existing ones, policymakers must consider the incentives and constraints
created in the long run. They should also be aware of the interactions
between public and private arrangements and, more specifically, how the latter
shapes the former.
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Palabras clave
universalismo, política social, América Latina