The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Wednesday that poor countries can also provide basic social protection like financing health care, cash transfers to the poor, the elderly and child protection.

The ADB said in a news release that results of its newly developed Social Protection Index (SPI) shows that the ability to provide appropriate social protection to a nation's citizens is not only a question of the country's wealth.

The SPI will give governments and international agencies a new tool to assess and compare the social protection efforts of countries throughout Asia and the Pacific region, said ADB.

While social protection is growing in importance in the fight against poverty and in meeting the Millennium Development Goals, there have been very few attempts to systematically quantify the overall impact of social protection activities in terms of expenditure, beneficiaries or the impact of the programs, so the SPI was created to fill this void, according to ADB.

"The development community's commitment for alleviating poverty, and to assist our developing member countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals in the Asia-Pacific region remains the priority challenge for ADB," said Ursula Schaefer-Preuss, ADB Vice-President of Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development. "This publication on the Social Protection Index provides us with an important and so far unique tool to have a better understanding of the challenges that are ahead of us," said Schaefer-Preuss.

The SPI, measured between zero and 1.0, has Japan and South Korea top the list, while countries considered relatively wealthy didn't always score higher than poorer neighbors, said ADB.

While India and Pakistan have similar levels of per capita gross domestic product, they score very differently on the SPI. India rates a 0.46 while Pakistan is at 0.07, said ADB.

On average, countries in the region spend just under 5 percent of their gross domestic product on social protection and achieve an overall average coverage level of 35 percent of key target groups, which include the unemployed, elderly, poor, and disabled, said ADB.

The index provides a combined measurement tool of the extent to which Asian and Pacific countries provide welfare, labor market, social security, health insurance, micro-credit, child protection, targeted education, and health support programs to their citizens, especially those living below the poverty line, according to ADB.

(Xinhua News Agency May 14, 2008)