Social Protection during the Pandemic: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico

In this paper we analyze the COVID-19 policy responses in socialprotection and evaluate to what extent have these measures potentially mitigated the impact of pandemic on inequality and poverty in the region’s four largest countries: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. There is a considerable variation in the governments’ policy responses and in terms of speed, breadth, and size. All nations put in place some measures to protect the livelihood of formal workers, which included prohibition of layoffs, salary and work hours reductions, and furloughs. Argentina, Brazil and Colombia launched programs to subsidize formal sector employment in companies that were hard hit by the crisis, and Mexico provided loans to small and medium size enterprises. All countries maintained intact their existing non-contributory transfer programs, and Argentina, Brazil and Colombia launched new emergency cash transfer programs, while Mexico did not. Substantial expansions of existing socialassistance or entirely new programs have been able to offset a significant share of the poverty caused by the crisis in Argentinaand Brazil, and to a lesser extent, Colombia.