Universal, categorical and targeted social protection: issues, debates and solutions

Targeting is a much, if not the most, contested element of social protection policymaking, programme design and implementation. Debates and contestation often result in a limited view of targeting and universality as diametrically opposed when, in practice, most countries demonstrate a combination of multiple features and approaches to defining who is eligible for inclusion in programmes and how they are identified in practice. This chapter considers intersections between approaches to targeting – from universality to those based on demographic and social categorisations, to those focused on poverty, food insecurity and beyond. It examines the potential for different approaches to address headline social development challenges - of food insecurity, multidimensional poverty and vulnerability, and exclusion - and how mitigating both structural and life cycle-related shocks and stresses requires combined approaches. In identifying solutions to targeting challenges, the chapter emphasises that no single approach to targeting will be effective and that combined approaches are required to respond to a diverse range of settings in which social protection is needed and implemented.