Under ISSA, Social security, as an essential social policy tool, has multiple objectives. It aims to provide a minimum standard of living, to smooth consumption by replacing lost or foregone income due to common life cycle or labour market risks, to support reproduction and -- it is increasingly (and once again) recognized – to promote employment and productivity.

International frameworks and most national social security systems, especially those designed around social insurance principles, are organized around common life cycle and labour market risks. These so-called “contingencies” – including childhood (as an inherently vulnerable stage of life), maternity/paternity, sickness, unemployment, employment injury, disability, old age and survivorship – have long been widely accepted as moments in which individuals and their households are most likely to experience income insecurity. Using collective financing mechanisms, including contributions, taxes or a combination of these, social security systems have historically provided income transfers for these moments, to either replace lost or foregone income or provide additional support (for example, to share the costs of childrearing or to cover the extra costs associated with disability).

According to the ILO, “Social security is the protection that society provides to individuals and households in order to ensure access to health and income guarantee, especially in case of old age, unemployment, sickness, disability, labor accident, maternity or lack of caregivers”. Thus, the social security net is a system that aims at building an economy for people through income guarantee and access to basic social services for all, particularly focusing on supporting groups of disadvantaged people in society. They are the elderly, the disabled, women, children and the poor. (Typically, a social security net includes: the job settlement support system. the social insurance system. the social support system, the basic social service guarantee system).

Toward multi-tiered designs for more coherent and effective social security systems

These multi-tiered designs are typically associated with old-age, disability or survivors’ pensions.

Importantly, all national social security systems typically incorporate elements of a social security, life cycle-based organization, as well as means-tested components.59 Therefore, the choice is not between one or the other, but is rather about achieving an appropriate combination, one that ensures that the primary objectives of social security systems – income security for children and older people, and for people experiencing parenthood, disability, unemployment, survivorship, or work-related injuries – accrue to all members of society, regardless of their attachment to the labour market or previous contributory history. Doing this, it often turns out, can also do much of the work of poverty reduction, by preventing it before it occurs and relieving undue pressure on last-resort anti-poverty programmes, ultimately enabling them to perform better.

As important as policies and programme design, effective and efficient administration and service delivery are crucial to achieving programmes’ goals, especially nationwide and multi-institutional ones. 60. This involves not only benefits delivery and payment, but also registration and registries management, as well as collecting contributions when applicable. In particular, effectively delivering services to vulnerable populations requires simplified procedures and adapted customer interaction channels complemented by tailored communication and awareness campaigns. 61 These practices have shown to be success factors in implementing both broad-based social security programmes and poverty targeted ones.

Compared to the international MDP measurement, apart from the basic social services dimensions, the Vietnamese MDP measurement includes an income dimension. Additionally, Viet Nam's MDP measurement is used for the triple purposes of (i) targeting, (ii) monitoring and (iii) policy formulation and implementation. With technical cooperation between UNDP and MOLISA, the multidimensional poverty line for the period of 2021 - 2025 has 3 big innovations, as follows.

First, increasing the minimum income threshold from 700,000 VND in rural areas, 900,000 VND in urban areas (in 2015 – 2020 period) to 1.5 million VND in rural areas, 2 million VND in urban areas (more than 2 times) in 2021 – 2025 period. This increase is remarkable, making an additional 10 million people eligible for government support on poverty reduction and social protection. This is an important and timely solution in the context of the COVID pandemic that has pushed millions of vulnerable households back into poverty.

Regarding the income dimension, an employment indicator has also been added which is important for people to ensure stable incomes. Under the income dimension, the dependent indicator is also added. This measures the ratio of working members and non-working members in a household. As a result, it generates disaggregated data for addressing the two separate issues of poverty reduction and social assistance.

Second, the new multi-dimensional poverty line is gradually shifting from measuring inputs to outcome indicators. For example, in health care, in the past we only measured the percentage of people who were provided with health insurance cards, regardless of whether the card holders used them or the quality of health care services received. But the new MDP line uses nutrition. And in education the  percentage of children entering school at the right age has been added to the school enrolment rate as a outcome measure. 

Third, promoting the application of information technology and digital transformation in self-registration and management of MDP data. Through IT application, anyone can self-register or enter information and data about their poverty situation into the Government’s self-registration and management of MDP (via this portal http://dangky.giamngheo.gov.vn). The commune/ward authorities can verify the information on the online portal. This digital system significantly reduces administrative procedures; lessens the volume of paper-based workload; and saves travelling costs for local people and officials. With self-declaration approach, participants are more responsible for the information declared and demonstrate their rights to benefit from the related poverty reduction policies and programs in a more timely manner, especially in the rapidly changing contexts of COVID-19. 

In Vietnam, a comprehensive social protection system should be designed with multiple layers, performing all four functions of the 4Ps, namely Promotion, Prevention, Provision and Protection. With technical assistance from UNDP and other UN agencies, Viet Nam's social protection system has also been designed with multiple layers, including four pillars (i) Employment, income and poverty reduction - Promotion; (ii) Social insurance - Prevention; (iii) Social assistance-Provision and (iv) Basic social services - Protection.