ABSTRACT
As the social welfare contract between the state and citizens is de facto broken, people turn to non-state action and their own informal mechanisms. In the context of limited statehood, citizens' own informal social pooling and hedging schemes provide the only viable strategy. Less attention has been paid to the benefits of informal hedging. This chapter extends analysis of informal social hedging, investigates the determinants of participation, and explores the extent to which risk-pool spreading provides additional protection. It presents an investigation of the social insurance literature, a contextual understanding of the social protection (SP) measures available, the methods utilised to undertake the study, the factors that increase the likelihood of an individual choosing to participate in informal forms of social insurance, the benefits to be derived from such participation and from multiple memberships, and conclusions and recommendations.
