Informal safety nets: an opportunity to design social protection policies in Nicaragua

Abstract

Most of the population define their daily life and opportunities in an informal environment. Through a case study focused in San José de Achuapa, North Pacific of Nicaragua, this essay (using multiple research tools: focus groups and interviews, participant observation and sample surveys) analyses the potential of informal safety nets in social protection policies. Informal safety nets, and survival strategies based in them specifically, have a critical impact in the well being of people, who build their culture and make significant poverty alleviation transfers within them. Informality, its virtues and pitfalls, represents an opportunity to improve public policies. Success in government programmes requires effective combination of formal and informal institutions and taking into account the interaction between the various informal structures. This, keeping in mind that informal safety nets have different characteristics, outcomes and empowerment in their members.