to be more precise it includes policies and programmes that aim to reduce poverty and make people less vulnerable to unemployment social exclusion sickness disability and old age by helping them to manage these risks and shocks this is one of the most important innovations in recent social protection policy and is a reaction to the problem of how to find and target the poor while most social protection programmes do include administrative mechanisms for reaching the poor increasingly policy makers recognise the high costs associated with poverty targeting and are aware of the important tradeoffs