Can social protection address both poverty and inequality in principle and practice?

The recent expansion of social protection in the Global South has focused on practice (the how) and not on principles (the why). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) endorse social protection as a means of addressing both poverty and inequality. In this article, which contributes to the Special Issue on ‘The principles and practice of social protection’, we focus on the principles that (often implicitly) underlie four types of social protection responses to poverty and inequality. The analysis of moral, economic, political and social arguments shows a convergence on the need to alleviate poverty, but the principled agreement to tackle inequality is weaker as it requires a broader mandate and more extensive state intervention. Regardless of strong moral/social arguments, dominant economic/political arguments are less inclined to accept the type of social protection required to address inequalities.