Definition

Maternity protection benefits are one element in the overall architecture of the social protection system. They protect pregnant and nursing women and adolescents from the risk of lack of income and poverty during a period of reduced income-earning capacity and increased cost of living, both related to their maternity period.

Tax-financed maternity protection benefits are complementary to maternity benefits provided through social insurance and cover women who do not qualify for benefits under social insurance. They are essential to protect women in situations of vulnerability to poverty, informality and social exclusion.

Rationale

Providing income security during this period of increased vulnerability protects women and adolescent girls by enabling them to cover the cost for a healthy diet and access to other needed goods and services, in particular medical care, including in relation to any pregnancy- and delivery complications (e.g. miscarriage, pre-term birth, multiple births etc.) and allowing for the necessary period of rest around child-birth, all of which is essential both for the mother’s and the child’s health.

Key features
Benefit Design

According to international standards, the benefits should be anchored in national laws and regulations and clearly specify the range, qualifying conditions and levels of the benefits. As a minimum, the level should be at a level sufficient “that the woman can maintain herself and her child in proper conditions of health and with a suitable standard of living” and for a duration of a minimum of 14 weeks. Benefits are typically paid periodically (monthly) but may sometimes also be paid in fewer instalments to lower administration costs.

In addition to cash benefits, medical care provided should, at a minimum, comprise pre- and postnatal care, skilled delivery and hospitalisation, where necessary (ILO C183).

Eligibility

The identification of beneficiaries usually requires a medical certificate proving the pregnancy. Also, tax-financed schemes are typically benefits-tested and paid only if the woman is not eligible for social insurance benefits. Sometimes, they are also means-tested, i.e. targeted to women in households below a certain income level or below a certain poverty-threshold. Means tested benefits, in particular if using proxy means-testing mechanisms, are easy to implement but often are not in line with principles anchored in international standards and have been criticised for several reasons including:

• Using the household as the unit of analysis, thereby potentially undermining the autonomy of the pregnant individual;
• The difficulty of establishing a reliable, rapid, cost-effective means-test and resulting exclusion errors that often lead to significant coverage gaps among those most in need;
• The lack of transparency and predictably of these mechanisms for the persons concerned;
• Stigmatizing effects of benefits targeted at the poor;
• Exclusion of specific groups such as minors.

Recognizing these limitations, some countries have introduced affluence-tests instead of poverty targeting mechanisms. Excluding high-income households produces significantly lower targeting errors but potential implementation costs vs benefits trade-offs should be considered.