Unemployment, poverty and social protection strategies: Peru 1998-2005

This paper uses information from a panel based on Peruvian National Household Surveys between 1998 and 2005 to quantitatively estimate the impacts that the loss of a job from a household member has. We find the following effects in the short run: a) reduces family income by 27%, b) reduces household’s real expenditures by 7%, c) diminishes the digested calories by 13%, and d) increases the probability of poverty by 44%. According to our results, the most effective strategy to mitigate these negative impacts on welfare would be an increase in the number of hours worked at the family level. Internal family transfers, receiving remittances from relatives abroad, and access to state social programs would be less effective. Finally, the benefit of the compensation for length of service (CTS) in the previous job would have no impact on halting the loss of welfare.Unemployment, poverty, social protection, caloric intake.