Promoting Universal Social Policy in MICs
Most middle-income countries have the financial and institutional resources to reduce poverty and inequality and improve social capabilities. But what is the right policy approach to secure these goals? We argue that to be effective and successful, social policies should be universal, providing the whole population with similar, generous transfers and services. To explore how universal policies can be implemented, we distinguish between the desired policy outputs (coverage, generosity, and equity) and the specific ways to secure them. We then introduce the concept of the policy architecture and analyze its influence on long-term trajectories. The chapter considers the impact of different trajectories on universalism in the long run, distinguishing between a bottom-up strategy that starts from the poor or other alternatives that involve the non-poor from the onset. We conclude the chapter with a call for more research on the interactions between policy design and political struggles.