SOCIAL POLICY RESEARCH: WHAT TO DO?

Mario Torres

Published in Research on Social Policy: Proposals for a Future Agenda. Edited by Mario Torres. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre. 1993. http://www.idrc.ca/socdev/pub/documents/torres.txt

Human development problems generated by the crisis of the 1980s and the changes introduced in the economic and political systems of several Latin American countries make the design of efficient and effective social interventions an urgent matter.  Unfortunately, the knowledge needed to carry out these interventions is insufficient.  It is not easy to successfully confront this situation, since the human, institutional and financial resources needed to support research are scarce.  A methodological proposal is required for identifying research priorities, which in the case of social policy, is a particularly complex task.

The methodological proposal presented in this work does not divide issues according to sectors such as education, health, employment, housing, social welfare or social security.  There are several reasons for this.  First, the need for a more holistic focus on human development problems has led to a search for intersectoral approaches (Torres, 1991).  Secondly, the state's shortage of human and financial resources, as well as the trend towards the privatization of social services, makes joint institutional efforts compulsory.  Thirdly, the problems faced by social policy in each social sector do not vary.  Finally, given the state's difficulty in responding to social problems, consideration should be given to restructuring the state's apparatus.  As a result, the present sectoral structure should not be thought of as permanent.

Consequently, this document assumes that social policy research should focus on both the crucial aspects of the policy-making process, and on the critical aspects of human development.  In other words, research must be addressed to the basic contents of social policy, and in doing so it must take into account both the targets of the policy and the internal dynamics of the policy process.  To this end, the discussion centers on two questions:  "How to act?" and "With whom to act?"

This work is based on discussions held during a series of regional consultations in Latin America (1).  These included in-depth interviews with researchers and planners, reviews of social programs and interventions, analyses of the results of specially requested consultancies (2), and recommendations resulting from workshops organized in several countries (3).  In a sense, this paper is a summary of the many views obtained during this process.  However, it seeks to go further by developing a methodological proposal for identifying social policy research priorities.  This approach, it must be stressed, is not aimed at discussing new or existing social policies, but rather at examining what might be done.

Regarding the above, a comment is necessary.  A discussion on social policy research priorities cannot be separated from one on social policy priorities.  Research should be carried out to support and evaluate current policies or to propose new policies. In this respect, the region's social policy situation is quite varied.  Some countries have proposed new directions in social policy, some are already applying new policies, and others are still using traditional formats (4).  The methodology used to prepare this document implicitly considered these developments in the belief that there was sufficient agreement in some areas to provide a starting point for the establishment of research priorities.  Most critically, despite the diversity of approaches, planners and researchers seem to agree on what the priorities of social policy should be. As has already been argued (Torres, 1991), the pressing situation, coupled with the lack of available knowledge, does not allow much room for conceptual discussion.  New policy contents will have to be specified while being designed and applied.

How To Act?  Relevant Aspects of the Process

Faced with urgent social needs, several criteria, including the following, could be used to develop a methodological proposal:

• Priority areas for sectoral or intersect work, such as child mortality in health, drop?outs in education, unemployed youths in labour, or nutrition in health and education.
• Type of desired impact, such as poverty reduction, increased service quality or the greater effectiveness of policies (Abugattas, 1991; Vergara, 1991).
• Strategic policy phases, such as diagnosis, design, application, monitoring or evaluation (Schkolnik, 1991).
• Operational aspects, such as appropriate selection instruments, financing mechanisms, competitiveness or effective management capacity (Sojo, 1991).

This proposal takes some of these criteria into account, but emphasizes relevant aspects of the process of social policy design, application and evaluation.  Current circumstances do not require directions as to policy goals, on which there is apparent consensus, as much as they require indications of how these goals may be reached, and how their results might be measured.  From this perspective, critical aspects of the policy-making process include the identification of target populations, institutional aspects and management, efficiency, sustainability, information, and evaluation.

The Identification of Target Populations

Because of a scarcity of resources and the need for in-depth intervention, more precise methodologies are required with which to identify beneficiaries or target populations.  This will improve the focus of policy activities and facilitate the evaluation of their redistributive effects.  There are two basic considerations to be taken into account:  how to focus activities, and what to do once targets have been identified.

The identification process involves four aspects:  (i) definition, (ii) inclusion, (iii) specification of supply and demand, and (iv) provision.

i) For the definition of target populations, several criteria have been proposed.  While not exclusive, they do lead to different results.  These criteria include:

• Social risk situations.  These involve the use of indicators such as: child and maternal mortality, morbidity due to infectious diseases, malnutrition, social abandonment, unemployment or social marginality (Abugattas, 1991).  Emphasis in this area is placed on the examination of groups with health, psychological or economic survival problems.
• The social potential of a group.  In this case, the criterion of age is used to identify infants, children, adolescents and young adults as typical groups.  Attention is given to the development of capacities and learning skills for the medium- and long-term, rather than attempting to solve short-term social problems.
• The precariousness of economic and labour positions in the productive structure.  This criterion usually identifies groups such as small entrepreneurs in the informal sector, peasants and traditional fishers (Schkolnik, 1991).  The entry point is a given group's economic vulnerability.

The development, application, and operational evaluation of these criteria are a high-priority issue in social policy methodological research.  The reason is that for practical purposes, the identification of target populations is both the beginning and the end of all policy processes.  No service delivery is possible, and no impact evaluations possible unless the beneficiaries are clearly defined.

ii) Once the group has been defined, it is included in specific programs.  Several criteria may be used:

• Self-identification by the potential beneficiaries. For example, this occurs when youths enrol in retraining programs or adolescents seek guidance.
• Residence in specific neighbourhoods, marginal zones or rural areas. In this case, an activity would involve an entire community.
• Needs indicated by some type of standard measures.  Periodic surveys have involving specially designed questionnaires have been used to this end (Schkolnik, 1991; Sojo, 1991).

Ensuring the inclusion of target populations in interventions is not a simple matter.  Groups with social needs do not always express them, make demands or make use of services.  There seems to be a positive relation between poverty or social marginalization and the inability to make demands.  The poor and those with particular social needs do not always have channels available to them for expressing their demands, and so their demands remain unvoiced.  Consider for example, the situations of temporary migrant workers and the rural poor who lack access to labour unions or the social security system, unemployed and inexperienced youths who are left out of the labour market, or pregnant adolescents who must hide their condition.

iii) The next step is to specify the contents of the demands and the capacity for supply.  Aspects such as the factors that condition a demand's existence, its contents, and the cost of accessing services must be considered.  In particular, the question of whether those requesting the service are those who need it most must be answered.  The perception and use of social services tends to be lower among more disadvantaged social strata.  This, among other things, contributes to the fact that the intended population is not always a program's actual beneficiary. 

iv) Once the demand is specified, the next step is to study what should be provided.  It is one thing to focus activities on specific groups, and another to determine what is to be given.  Research should assist in determining whether this should be training, credit or technical assistance, advice and orientation, or some other form of assistance.  Similarly, the policy's philosophical basis should be defined:  Will assistance be emphasized, or will the creation and development of abilities be accented?  Are the determinants of poverty ?or of any other situation of need? external to those suffering it, or must the needy make efforts that only they can make (Irrarázabal, 1991)?  For example, an assistance approach would focus on studying the effective distribution of benefits.  A promotional approach would concentrate on the development of abilities and service payment opportunities in an open market situation.

Analysis of Institutional Aspects and Management

Social policies are applied within institutional frameworks that are often unfavourable.  In some areas - for example, macroeconomic or national defence policies - there are clear authority structures. This is not the case in the social sectors (Molina, 1991).  Here, intersectoral agreement mechanisms within the state and between the state and society have yet to be developed.  One issue requiring urgent study is how to apply intersectoral policies within an institutional framework that will continue to be sectoral.

The issue of how sectoral institutions are to plan, apply and evaluate integrated social policies has not yet been resolved. Institutional prerequisites for the most efficient and effective social policy applications must be examined:  What framework will be used to apply new social policies?  Within that framework, what type of institutional arrangements is desirable and viable?  This study must be made at the central, regional and local government levels, particularly in those countries planning to decentralize their social programs (Vergara, 1991).  Legal, normative and organizational aspects must be re-examined.  Particularly important will be coordination between public and private sector activities, including NGOs dedicated to development activities, private research centres, universities and businesses.

Decentralization is a growing trend in the region.  There are several questions that must be answered as quickly as possible:  What are the results of the first experiences in social program decentralization?  What should be decentralized and what should remain under central government control?  What and how to decentralize, for example, in education, health and social security (Urrutia, 1991)?  Other related questions include:  What coordination and follow?up mechanisms are required?  What limits are required in the geographical and social differentiation of programs in order to avoid affecting the equity of results?

Many countries are beginning to grant more autonomy to local municipal governments.  However, the extent of the region's municipal management capacity is somewhat unknown.  Moreover, despite the closeness of this level of government to target beneficiaries, most activities are still not integrated.  The practice of sectoral program execution is an obstacle to integrated program management.

It is important to know the management capacity of organizations working at the community level, such as schools, medical centres, social service agencies and NGOs.  Their capacity to attract, generate and manage resources must be studied.  Some research has been made in this area, and there is some information available.  However, it is not enough.  It is necessary to identify obstacles originating from laws and norms, routine practices and the perceptions of personnel, as well as their level of training and commitment.  Similarly, the actual ability of grassroots organizations to sustain programs must be studied (Helfer, 1991).  No one denies the need to decentralize and provide greater participation.  However, social participation has not yet been clearly defined nor have the mechanisms which can be used to promote and achieve it been identified (Vergara, 1991).  A key consideration is the reinforcement or design of social control mechanisms for those who conceive, apply or evaluate social policies.  How may greater accountability be achieved?

Efficiency

Although diminished in relative or absolute terms, public resources still fund existing social policies.  We must examine the rationale of public expenditure (Cohen, 1991).  How are expenditures taking place?  What is the level of policy efficiency in cost?benefit terms?  What are the prices of services?  What portion of invested resources reaches beneficiaries?  The problem is not so much insufficient funds, as wasted resources due to inefficient bureaucratic practices or corruption.  The key question is how to achieve efficiency without an increase in resources  (Urrutia, 1991; Sojo, 1991). The following provide some examples of the issues that must be studied in-depth and discussed widely:

• The structure of public social expenditures.  Prices of social services.  Cost recovery modalities (Londoño, 1991).
• The private expenditure of NGOs and the population in general on service provision and consumption.
• Analyses of subsidies, including their recommended duration.  What can the population provide and what should be subsidized?  How to subsidize without creating dependency?
• Follow-up systems for public expenditure and its destination.
• Alternatives for spending scarce available resources.  Is the state the only alternative?  Can public spending be carried out by private agencies, with supervision and control by the state?  May greater efficiency be achieved by privatizing social services?

Sustainability

Of vital concern is how to sustain social policies through time, making them resistant to changes in subsidies, decreases in foreign aid, the impacts of other policies, and instability in institutional and human resources.

With respect to financial resources, several important research topics should be mentioned:

• Fiscal instruments to finance social policies (Londoño, 1991).
• The availability of private sector resources and how to attract them.
• The contributions that can be made by the target population.
• The financial circuits which local governments can use.

The general issue is constituted by the alternatives that may be tested for combining public and private resources, state and private management, and control and monitoring by the state and social organizations.  To date, the use of state modalities has predominated.

The impact of other policies on the sustainability of social programs makes it particularly important to study the positive and negative impacts of macroeconomic, fiscal and tax policies (Londoño, 1991).  Similarly, the benefits of social policies for the sustainability of economic programs and other policies related to productive transformation, technological innovation and environmental conservation must be demonstrated.  The economic costs of unsuitable social policies are unknown, making it impossible to document their interrelation with economic investments.

With respect to human and institutional resources, the technical weaknesses of ministries and local governments make it necessary to develop alternatives for the rapid retraining of public sector personnel.  These alternatives should emphasize management abilities with the goal of developing necessary management resources (Sojo, 1991).  To this end, the potential role of universities should be examined, as well as the type of institutional adjustments they will require in order to train the professionals required for tomorrow.  

Information

It can be said that the region lacks information, but not data.  Social policy information research must be geared towards facilitating management and evaluation.  Methodological research must seek to improve, simplify and make use of existing data to generate more adequate information on current public and private institutional and human resources.  Such research is also required to obtain sufficiently refined social indicators for specific social interventions.  Among the most important research issues are the following:

• Situational and social trend analysis (analyses of poverty, quality of life or social integration levels and their tendency to increase or decrease)  (Webb, 1991).
• The monitoring and evaluation of program execution.  Information systems and social indicators disaggregated by area, department and municipality or district.
• The integration of existing information systems at the national or regional levels that would serve as a diagnostic base for integrated and intersectoral programs.
• More efficient and widespread use of existing information services, particularly by the general population.  The design of decentralized information systems allowing free access to diverse users and the capture of information and results generated by NGOs.   Open information systems are needed to create well-informed public opinions.
• The articulation between situational and social tendency indicators and service provision indicators.  Data on representative services or programs for follow-up and evaluation activities (Webb, 1991).  The articulation of social and economic indicators to examine the mutual impact of social and economic policies (Echeverri, 1991).
• Qualitative data to complement quantitative data, in order to provide information on service coverage and quality.
• International comparative analyses for the development of national and regional evaluation methods (Urrutia, 1991)

Evaluation

In general, the relation between social program returns and expected improvements in equality and social equity must be studied. Evaluations included in program follow-ups are indispensable for incorporating the criterion of quality into activities.  However, social policy evaluation must also focus upon continuous quality control; evaluations at the end of the day may not be as useful as evaluations conducted during the process of policy implementation.

How to incorporate the perceptions of beneficiaries into evaluation processes is also a subject that has to be examined.  In addition, objective service evaluation criteria must be developed as well as social control mechanisms to ensure greater accountability.

Research leading to the identification of channels through which social programs affect economic development is a crucial priority.  The profitability of social policies must be determined in order to complement their ethical defence with economic reasons which can be presented to authorities managing national or local budgets, as well to public scrutiny (Londoño, 1991).  In other words, research must be developed which can contribute to demonstrating that social policies are an economic "investment", not just an "expense", and that they are useful as well as desirable.

Evaluation research should be directed to examining how social services are being used and how relevant the offer is to needs.

Finally, prospective research must identify social policy scenarios (Schkolnik, 1991).  To this end, technical evaluation results are needed that will clarify the redistributive impacts of social policy and indicate achievements of greater social equity.

With Whom to Act?  Critical Life Transitions

Although opportunities were provided for the raising of thematic social policy issues, the discussions carried out during this project always turned to the policy-making process.  Research priorities were apparently more linked to the process than to contents.  However, given the wide scope of social policies, the points raised in the previous section, while helpful in delimiting priorities, are not sufficient to fully establish priorities. It was interesting to observe that no unique criteria for the selection of substantive social policy themes emerged from the discussions.  That is why a theoretical-methodological concept is required that can help select substantive priorities in social policy research and planning.

It is difficult to decide what strategic research to carry out in a particular field when there is a lack of knowledge about the causal relations explaining the phenomena under consideration.  The complexity of human development makes this a particularly difficult task in the case of social policies.  As a way of dealing with this matter, it was argued that social policies, and by extension research on them, should be guided by a systemic approach (Torres, 1991).  There appears to be consensus on this point of view.  However, turning this theoretical approach into an operative instrument within the framework of a methodological proposal is not easy.

The following proposal is based on the idea that human development involves critical stages, which must be appropriately faced in order to avoid cumulative negative effects on both the individual and society in general.  The basic concept is that of critical life transitions.  Critical life transitions are periods of human life when crucial personal development does not depend so much on the individual but rather on a cluster of social actors, processes and structures.  Critical life transitions involve social problems which are not sectoral or do not pertain to individual disciplines, nor are they those of isolated individuals, or single institutions or organizations.

In light of existing social knowledge, it is plausible to say that there are crucial social and biological transitions in a person's evolutionary process.  During these transitions, a complex socialization process takes place that includes the development of capacities, the appropriation of knowledge, the learning of abilities and the acquisition of the values needed for the individual's social integration.  In the classic social sciences, the closest idea to the concept of critical life transitions is that of the passage from one stage to the next within the socialization process:  birth, puberty, adulthood, marriage, family formation, retirement and death.  All these stages have been examined in detail in modern and traditional societies.  For our purposes, this classical framework is too individualistic.  However, it is an interesting reference for it permits discussion about certain life periods during which individuals, families and even whole communities are closely linked by specific social problems.

Based on the results of available social research, expert opinions, and the interests expressed by many different population groups, this proposal seeks to concentrate social policy research efforts on four critical life transitions. These are: initial development, early social incorporation, adult social integration, and retirement.  Evidence indicates that problems occurring during these transitions have cumulative effects on human development and affect a variety of spheres in personal and social life.

Initial Development

Initial development refers to a period of life that may begin even from before conception to the second or third year of life, passing through gestation, birth and initial survival.  It is a transition that involves the child and the mother, as well as a set of other groups and institutions in their social environment.  From a social policy perspective, the focus should not be limited to the mother and child dyad. It should also include groups such as adolescents and youths in pre?marriage and pre-parenthood stages, pregnant women, recently-formed families, newborn infants, and children of up to two or three years of age.

It is a critical life transition for the adolescent seeking sexual and family orientation, for the recently-formed couple seeking family planning services, for the pregnant teenager, for the families of all these individuals, for the newborn infant and for children during their first years of life.  The following appear the most outstanding social problems requiring research:

• Adolescent fertility and fertility with short inter-birth intervals;
• Maternal and child mortality and morbidity;
• Infant physical and psychomotor development; and
• Mother and child cognitive learning and affective development.

The social problems that occur during this transition are not independent from one another.  On the contrary, they form a cluster that should be considered from the systemic perspective of the individual's initial development.  It is not a matter for observation from a sectoral perspective, because these problems can only be effectively treated in an integrated manner.

The lack of solutions to these issues generates a cascade of negative effects at both the individual and societal levels.  Sexual disorientation leading to unwanted pregnancies, poorly-managed pregnancies, births in precarious circumstances, inadequately stimulated or abandoned infants: these are not necessarily separate problems.  Instead, they signify that an incomplete or poor transition is taking place, not only for the child - the critical reference point of the process - but also for the mother, the couple, the family and even the community.  Inadequate solutions to problems in this transition period lead to a compilation of negative effects later in life.  These include, for example, children with multiple biological, psychological and social problems that limit their development and prevent them from easy transition to school; frustrated and humiliated adolescents and young mothers facing additional and undesired pregnancies, abortion problems and social and psychological maladjustment; disintegrated families; and high levels of maternal and child morbidity and mortality.  Successful social interventions during this life transition may avoid enormous social, economic and psychological costs.  Adequate support at this time may increase the probability of successful transitions later in life.

The groups of aspects and actors involved in this transition have been separately analysed.  However, available social research suggests that these problems should be solved in a holistic way.  This is a great challenge that must nevertheless be successfully confronted in order to produce effective interventions.  As examples, the following two cases should be considered.  The first refers to adolescent pregnancy.  The prevention, treatment and follow-up actions required to solve this problem are many. They involve sexual education, specialized health care, education in childcare, assistance and orientation for the adolescent's family, and even orientation for the local school staff (in some countries pregnant girls are expelled from school).  The second example concerns the psychomotor development of infants from birth to the first or second year of life.  This case demands orientation programs for mothers, evaluation of day-care programs, improvement of women's labour conditions, community support programs for families in critical situations, and nutrition support programs.

Early Social Incorporation

In the case of Latin America, this life transition refers to entrance to the formal education system.  The centre of attention is the child entering school, but parents, schoolteacher, those in charge of school nutrition programs and local school officials, preschool education programs, and community programs are also involved.  This is a critical transition for children in that their future educational opportunities and standard of living are strongly conditioned by initial success or failure.

During this transition, elemental but fundamental learning abilities must be developed and skills acquired for reading, writing and numerical analysis.  At this stage, it is important to provide, for example, educational support to children with learning problems. And it is important to involve and orient parents, to mobilize the community to recapture school dropouts, to make school activities compatible with the productive activities of the community and of the family, to provide nutritional support, and to appropriately retrain teachers.  This is another cluster of needs to be systemically faced.

The most prominent social problems requiring high-priority policy research are:

• Deficient preschool preparation and elemental but fundamental learning abilities and skills;
• Insufficient basic learning, particularly reading, writing and numeric analysis;
• Failure and repetition in the first years of school; and
• As a consequence of the latter, definitive school desertions.

Educational research suggests that the child, who fails in the early years of education, repeats grades, and that in the long term the repeater leaves school.  The family suffers social frustration; the child grows up feeling diminished.  Moreover, dropping-out is often conducive to early work, which reinforces entrapment in a situation from which it is very difficult to escape.

There is another cascade of positive or negative effects stemming from this critical life transition.  It is known that incomplete primary education is associated later on with high fertility rates, lack of knowledge about preventive health care practices, limited access to skilled labour, deficient learning capacities, etc.  The cumulative negative impact on the personal and social level is enormous and its cost to society is immeasurable.  Societies pay very high economic and social costs for a population with diminished personal self-concepts and minimal learning capacities.  Even for countries with low school failure or repetition rates, the costs of producing a literate population can more than double if children must wait until the end of their primary studies to be able to read, write and count well.  The provision of timely support at this critical moment could lead to a different future for both the person and for society.

Adult Social Integration

This critical life transition revolves around inclusion in the labour market.  It may, therefore, be initiated at different ages and embrace a variable number of years depending on when it occurs:  upon leaving primary or secondary school, after graduation from secondary school, or during or upon ending higher education.  This stage involves more than simply moving from school into the world of work.  It means incorporation into the adult world of society, supposedly with all of a citizen's rights and obligations.

The key social problems making this transition difficult, and where research efforts should be concentrated are:

• Incomplete basic education and a lack of even a minimal level of learning abilities;
• Incompatibility between the expectations, knowledge and abilities acquired at school and university, and the labour market's demands and possibilities;
• Poor access to minimal health and social security services, particularly those associated with forming a family; and
• Lack of minimally informed participation in local political decision processes, where this is possible.

Since the cumulative effect of the problems experienced in previous transitions is felt here, both target populations and actors are dramatically multiplied - youths of different ages and abilities, the formal school system and its teachers, the public and private higher education sector, vocational schools, the government and private entrepreneurial sectors in all their industrial diversity.  This multiplicity complicates the situation even further.

The education sector probably receives most of the attention because of its relation to employment, but the cluster of related problems reflects the complexities faced by youths entering adulthood.  The most visible negative aspects of inadequate transition at this stage are unemployment and underemployment.  There are, however, other ill effects whose economic costs are difficult to estimate.  Some of these consequences include: the personal, family, and even collective frustration produced by an education which does not fulfil the individual's expectations with respect to employment; the impossibility of carrying out a personal development project; and difficulties and later obstacles in forming a family.  These phenomena, through time, erode a society's human potential.  In many cases, the situation is the result of unsolved problems in previous transitions.  The constant and growing numbers of youths entering the labour market in the above conditions makes society's capacity for productive transformation, economic competitiveness and technological development almost impossible.

In some cases, the social, economic and political price is very high:  violence, marginality, and lack of interest in a just and democratic society; or involvement in illicit economic activities which, as in the case of drug trafficking, suffocate the viability of new economic and political development models.  In some countries, the cost of violence can be valued in the billions of dollars.

As in the previous case, appropriate intervention to reverse or at least mitigate the situation may have an enormous social and economic return.  Research must include aspects related to education, the needs of the business sectors, technological innovations, youth assistance programs and social welfare policies.  Social and economic investment at this stage may have lasting effects far beyond the youthful age of those involved.

Retirement

Another important social transition refers to the change from active life to different types of retirement. This transition certainly does not begin with retirement, but much before.  It involves the population reaching Third Age, their close relatives and the community.

Compared with previous life transitions, the set of social problems is apparently smaller here.  Two major research areas appear:

• Retirement and pension systems; and
• Health services.

The present crisis in social security and pension systems indicates that the region's societies have not been very farsighted. This topic requires high-priority attention, since Latin American societies are aging and pressure for services for the mature and elderly will increase.

Once again, the situation reflects a cluster of problems requiring multisectoral attention.  Certainly, the retired are a social group with no capacity for social pressure.  They are voiceless, particularly those in society's poorest sectors, but their lack of care may create indirect but unbearable pressures on society as a whole.

The specific entry point for research might be the current and future potential of social security systems.  While of great importance to the elderly, they are also most relevant to the well-being of other social groups.  Social security underlies all the critical life transitions discussed to this point.  Depending on the country, these systems cover pregnancy, illness, accidents, disability, unemployment, retirement and death.  As a result, these systems have a significant potential for providing multisectoral social interventions.

An Application by Way of Conclusion

Taking the case of "early social incorporation" as an example, research should focus on the identification of those individuals prone to school failure; the sort of educational, nutritional and family preventive or remedial programs that may be developed for them; the way in which these programs can be decentralized; the capacity of local schools to apply them; the costs of school drop-outs; how to subsidize programs; the role the private sector can play; how to locally finance programs; the information required for follow-up; the most appropriate indicators; how to gauge the relevance of programs and their later impact on school performance; and how to determine whether they are a real social investment.

Proposing a methodology with which to identify research priorities is a way of focusing a problem in reality.  The proposal described here considers social policies as an instrument available to both government and society for the promotion of human development.  The proposal supposes that the central objective of social policy is not to be cheap, effective or easily applied, but to be ethical - that is, to have human development as its primordial objective.  This should certainly not lead us to forget that social policies should pay attention to important economical, political or organizational issues; otherwise they could not meet their objectives.

The attention of this paper has been focused on how to do things.  The objective of interventions to develop society's human potential was also emphasized.  For this reason, a concurrent research focus on human life's key moments -where the few existing resources can make a significant difference - was proposed.  No assumption has been made regarding the possible existence of differing perspectives on this issue.  Surely, there must be a variety, because nothing is more controversial than human development.  We all have opinions; in the end, there is nothing closer to us than ourselves.

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1991 "Acceso, Calidad y Equidad en la Política Educativa."  Paper presented at the Workshop on Social Policies.  FEDESARROLLO, IDRC.  Bogota, August 1-2.

Vergara, Carlos
1991 "Políticas Sociales y Gobernabilidad Democrática:  Una Mirada desde la Sociedad Civil."  Paper presented at the Workshop on Research Needs for the Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Social Policies.  ECLAC/CELADE, Ministerio de Planificación y Cooperación, IDRC.  Santiago, August 12-13.

Webb, Richard
1991 "Datos e Indicadores para el Diseño de Políticas Sociales."  Paper presented at the Workshop on Social Policies.  Consejo Nacional de Población.  Lima, July 23-24.

(1) The consultations included visits to researchers, social research centers and government organizations in Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

(2) Basic documents were requested from ten consultants in Colombia, Chile and Peru:  Abugattas (1991), Echeverri (1991), Helfer (1991), Londoño (1991), Rojas (1991), Sojo (1991), Schkolnick (1991), Urrutia (1991), Vergara (1991) and Webb (1991).

(3) Three workshops on research priorities were organized with support of the International Development Research Centre - Canada in Peru (July 23 - 24, 1991), Colombia (August 1 - 2, 1991) and Chile (August 12 - 13, 1991).  In Peru, the event took place under the auspices of the National Population Council, the Pontificia Universidad Católica and the Universidad del Pacífico.  In Colombia, the workshop was organized by FEDESARROLLO, with the collaboration of the National Planning Department.  In Chile, it was organized by the Ministry of Planning and Cooperation, with support of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Centro Latinoamericano de Demografía (CELADE).  The workshops were attended by researchers, NGO representatives, members of state organizations, planners and politicians.

(4) Some examples are the recently prepared Strategy for Bolivia's Social Development; the Chilean 1990 - 1991 Social Action Plan; Colombia's Development Plan, which includes the social policy component.  The concurrence of important foreign aid from bilateral and multilateral sources is foreseen for this type of efforts.