Birdsall

Deininger

Gorbachev

Lipton

Rachel Sabates-Wheeler

Sabates-Wheeler

Stephen Devereux

IDS Bulletin

English

Sabates?Wheeler, Rachel

Devereux, Stephen

IDS OpenDocs

61
1 Introduction
The notion of a ‘universal social minimum’ is a
welcome and provocative intervention in the social
protection debate. While the initial thinking on social
protection focused on providing income- or
consumption-based ‘safety nets’ and economic risk
management, the universal social minimum places
equity and rights squarely at the centre of the social
protection agenda. This moves the approach
decisively away from top-down approaches, based
on ‘residual welfarism’ and towards bottom-up
approaches, based on empowerment and agency.
Those of us who were concerned about the relative
neglect of the ‘social’ in ‘social protection’ can only
applaud a vision that starts with the social, and only
incidentally concerns itself with the economics of
risk and of social protection provision.
So, it is impossible to disagree with the universal social
minimum as an ideal – like motherhood and apple pie.
But does it all add up in reality? What precisely is the
‘social minimum’ anyway? How is it going to happen?
Does this recipe for universal social justice have any
ingredients, or is it just half-baked apple pie in the sky?
In this brief comment, we raise some questions and
offer suggestions for further thinking.
2 A confused discussion about inequality
Koy Thomson argues that inequality provides a
justification for paying attention to people at the
bottom. Tackling inequality requires the establishment of
a social minimum. But what is the ultimate vision of the
social minimum? Is the vision to establish equality of
opportunities or of outcomes? The text seems to
obfuscate the causes of (in)equality – the things that
perpetuate or change the distribution of income or
assets – as opposed to the outcome of those causes,
which is measured inequality. Is this a question of final
distribution or fairness of opportunities? Is it not that
some level of inequality is good for ‘pro-poor’ growth?
What sort of opportunities should be made more equal
and what implications would this have for future poverty
reduction and risk management? For example, cross-
country studies confirm that land equality does not
necessarily lead to higher levels of productivity (see
Lipton et al. 2002 and Sabates-Wheeler 2005 for
reviews of the evidence). In their contributions to this
IDS Bulletin, Michael Carter, Christopher Barrett and
Stefan Dercon all point to the existence of low-level
productivity traps that require substantial targeted asset
transfers to escape from. Is the ideological egalitarianism
of the social minimum opposed in principle to giving
some people a hand-up out of poverty?
It is also important to be very clear about what
inequalities and inequities matter for the poor. This is
to a large degree an empirical question. Recently, a
clear distinction has been made between the effect
of income inequality on growth vs. asset inequality
on growth. Evidence indicates that the empirical link
between asset inequality and growth is strong and
negative. For instance, there is wide consensus on
feedback to growth from equality of access to
education, initial land distribution (Birdsall et al. 1995)
and to operated farm land (Deininger and Squire
1998). Birdsall and Londoño (1997) venture that ‘the
effect of income inequality on growth apparently
reflects differences in a fundamental element of
economic structure, namely, the access of different
groups to productive assets’. Importantly, their
econometric work shows that any effect of income
inequality disappears once asset inequality is
A Universal Social Minimum: 
A Recipe for Social Justice or
‘Apple Pie in the Sky’?
Rachel Sabates-Wheeler and Stephen Devereux
IDS Bulletin Volume 38  Number 3  May 2007  © Institute of Development Studies
accounted for. Overall their findings show that an
unequal distribution of assets, especially human
capital and land, affects overall growth. It affects
income growth of the poor disproportionately. A
better distribution of assets increases the income of
the poor, increases aggregate growth and reduces
poverty – but (this evidence suggests), better income
distribution, without asset redistribution, will not
accelerate income growth.
3 What is the resource envelope for social rights?
There is little point in conferring rights and
entitlements in theory, if they cannot possibly be
realised within existing public budgets. There are two
issues here: (1) the level at which the right is provided
(the nation-state or the global level) – if a
government is unable to deliver a social minimum can
we call on a ‘Global Social Protection Fund’ to do so,
in the name of global public goods provisioning? (2)
An ethical issue of whether we focus on rights or
duties – this will determine the policy response. A
focus on rights necessarily centralises the
establishment and provision of a bundle of goods,
whereas a focus on duties to protect and care for
fellow citizens/humans may instead decentralise the
burden of provision to communities, faith-based
organisations, etc. The model of social protection
here would be one of discretion and charity which
would require long-term commitments of
communities to care for their poor and vulnerable
members. Perhaps this discussion needs to be framed
in terms of duties rather than rights?
4 Who determines ‘decent’ and ‘dignified’?
Debates and disagreements over ‘universal’ and
‘relative’ or ‘context-specific’ rights and
responsibilities also apply to notions of what
constitutes ‘decent’ and ‘dignified’. This may create
problems for establishing a global social minimum.
For example, in some societies, education of girls is
not considered a priority. Can ‘we’ insist that ‘they’
include girls’ education in their social minimum,
without being labelled neo-colonialists or cultural
imperialists?
5 What is the final vision of the universal social
minimum?
From our reading of Koy Thomson’s article, the
vision would include fairness in opportunities to all,
provision of basic public services and the means to a
decent living for those who are unable to take
advantages of the fairness in opportunities.
Furthermore, there would be an emphasis on
enabling the ‘less advantaged’ to progress into full
and equal members of society. Ring any bells? An
astute reader may be forgiven for asking if socialism
hasn’t already been attempted on a massive scale –
and failed massively. In the Soviet central planning
model, social protection and the provision of a social
floor for all citizens was central. In fact, the reality of
the socialist model was never more apparent than in
the 1980s when Gorbachev began to talk of
‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’ as the way forward.
Equalising attitudes crop up from time to time
even today. Some citizens understood the call for
social justice as ‘equalising everyone’… On this
point, we want to be perfectly clear: socialism has
nothing to do with equalising. Socialism cannot
ensure conditions of life and consumption in
accordance with the principle ‘From each
according to his ability, to each according to his
work. This will be under communism’. 
(Gorbachev 1987: 100)
Why was the vision for universal social protection
unachievable, or unsustainable, in the Soviet Union, in
Eastern Europe, in China, in North Korea? Where
something close to this ideal does exist, as in Cuba,
are the social and political costs too high? Are there
lessons to be learnt for the pursuit of a social
minimum? Thomson might argue that the universal
social minimum constitutes ‘socialism in reverse’ and
as such should not be compared with the failed soviet
model. It is reversed because the political
commitment to a social minimum will be built from
the ‘bottom-up’ rather than imposed from the
centre. The nature and degree of social protection
under the soviet system was not chosen on the basis
of revealed preferences, but determined
paternalistically by those in power, who were unlikely
to be beneficiaries of any welfare payments. The
result was a low quality, allocatively inefficient benefit
system, which stifled individual incentives, bred
corruption in a bureaucratic leviathan, and generated
alternative pathways to privilege and inequality.
Or perhaps Thomson has the ‘Nordic model’ in mind,
where high levels of taxation finance high levels of
benefits for all. But the Nordic countries are also
high-income countries, with a large fiscal basis
available for redistribution to achieve social goals on
which there is a broad social consensus. Where does
this reality leave poorer countries?
62 Sabates-Wheeler and Devereux A Universal Social Minimum: A Recipe for Social Justice or ‘Apple Pie in the Sky’?
IDS Bulletin Volume 38  Number 3  May 2007 63
6 Where is the political constituency for a
universal social minimum?
There is an enormous bandwagon behind social
protection right now, with cash transfer projects
being piloted and national Social Protection
Strategies being drafted in countries across Africa
and beyond. But the drivers of almost all these
initiatives are bilateral or multilateral donors and
international NGOs, not national governments, and
certainly not local civil society. Besides, a social
minimum goes far beyond the mandate or capacity
of external actors to deliver. It requires a social
contract within each country – constructed from
political will by governments, and political pressure
by citizens – to drive this agenda forward. In this
sense, the ‘campaign’ for a universal social minimum
is part of a broader push for democratic deepening,
in countries where democratic institutions and
political accountability are often as fragile as the
macro-economy and administrative capacity. A lot
of ingredients are needed to bake this particular
apple pie!
References
Birdsall, N., Ross, D. and Sabot, R. (1995) Inequality
and growth reconsidered: Lessons from East Asia.
World Bank Economic Review 9.3: 477–508
Birdsall, N. and Londoño, J.-L. (1997) ‘Asset Inequality
Does Matter’, paper presented to the American
Economics Association Annual Meetings, New
Orleans, Washington DC: Inter American
Development Bank, 4–6 January
Deininger, K. and Squire L. (1998) ‘New Ways of
Looking at Old Issues’, Journal of Development
Economics 57: 259–87
Gorbachev, M.S. (1987) Perestroika i Novoe Myshlenie
dlya Nashei Straniy i Vsego Mira, Moscow:
Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury
Lipton, M., Eastwood, R. and Kirsten, J. (2002) Land
and Asset Size, Structure and Distribution and the
Links to Income in Three Drylands, Brighton: Poverty
Research Unit, University of Sussex
Sabates-Wheeler, R. (2005) Asset Inequality and
Agricultural Growth: How are patterns of asset
inequality established and reproduced?,
Washington DC: World Bank


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A Universal Social Minimum: A Recipe for Social Justice or ‘Apple Pie in the Sky’?

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