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EFFECTIVENESS AND SHORTCOMINGS OF VARIOUS TYPES OF SOCIAL SECURITY MEASURES ADOPTED BY DEVELOPING COUNTRIES IN ASIA
(by Kenneth Thompson)
1. The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss the effectiveness and shortcomings of the types of social security measures now in force in developing countries in Asia. Public assistance schemes and public health services are dis- cussed first, but the paper focuses mainly on schemes of employers' liability, national provident funds and social insurance. The general nature of these schemes is described in the paper "Social Security in Asia".
Public assistance scehens
2.
Non-contributory benefit schemes in which there are residential and income qualifications have the merit in principle of concentrating necessarily limited resources on those who are considered to be most in need. The scheme may be confined to some form of emergency relief in time of an epidemic or on the occurrence of a
national disaster (for example, Sri Lanka's scheme for compensation for distress caused by floods or gales), or may be more ambitious in scope and seek to rectify more prolonged deficiencies in incomes. Sri Lanka's Public Assistance Scheme gives cash allowances to the sick, aged and infirm who are in destitute circumstances. In Hong Kong, the Public Assistance Scheme, described as "... a means of ensuring that no eligible person or family has less than an adequate level of income", deals not only with persons who need financial help because of illness or unemployment, but also with low wage earners, a group often overlooked in welfare measures, who may be eligible for allowances whilst working. These schemes in developing countries rely on the sense of social solidarity and invoke the spirit of community responsibility which, in its various forms, traditionally has been a strong force for social protection in Asian countries. Even so, public assistance measures have to face severe competition from other social services for funds (see Appendix I) which tends to depress allocations to low levels. In addition to financial constraints, it is a general characteristic of such schemes that their benefits tend not to widely publicised, and thus eligible persons sometimes are unaware of their entitlement. Added to these are the difficulties of co-ordinating several separate schemes, and of achieving the optimum integration with voluntary assistance programmes. As a result, the impact of assistance allowances is reduced by a lack of understanding amongst the groups of persons for whom they are intended. Furthermore, public attitudes towards the recipients of some forms of allowances normally are such as to deter some persons from claiming.
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In contrast, the non-contributory principles underlying the social security systems in Australia and New Zealand are widely accepted and well established. Consequently, the schemes function in an effective manner. They have a wide range of benefits and have been subject to many changes and improvements in the interests of the persons in need of protection. One of the most recent innovations in the Australian scheme is Supporting Mothers' Benefit. In enacting legislation to deal with the financial needs of mothers who, for various reasons, lack of the support of a husband, the Australian scheme has displayed the flexibility which is a strength of a non-contributory system. However, there are dangers arising from the inherent difficulty of resisting strong pressures for new or improved benefits, where these are financed indirectly by government revenues.
comment "Social progress is an expensive process. Our ingenuity in thinking up plans for bigger and better welfare programmes invariably outruns our capacity to pay for them", made by a speaker from New Zealand at the ILO Conference in 19712, underlines the fundamental problem of controlling the development of contributory schemes, including the public assistance schemes referred to above, which may be affected by changing political attitudes and by fluctuations in economic conditions. The development and effectiveness of the public assistance schemes in developing countries are also conditioned by their essentially complementary and transitional role in relation to the other types of social security schemes in force or under consideration by the authorities.
The
1 "The Five Year Plan for Social Welfare Development in Hong Kong, 1973-78."
non-
2 Quoted in "Social Security as a World Problem", Wilfred Jenks, Occasional Papers in Industrial Relations, No. 6, 1972, Victoria University, Wellington, N.Z.
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