Social assistance in the Coronavirus pandemic: the current status of the system and the path to optimization

Abstract

The social assistance system, as a basic social system arrangement related to the country’s livelihood, has taken constructive temporary measures in the process of epidemic prevention and control of the COVID-19, safeguarding people's lives, maintaining social stability, and producing a wide range of social effects. However, it is also necessary to see that the social assistance system faces the dilemma of increasing the number of people to be assisted, the unsoundness of the emergency operation system, the lack of service level and the poor sustainability of assistance funds under the normalization of epidemic prevention and control. Therefore, we analyze the problems to find the possible optimization path of social assistance, make up the shortcomings of the social assistance system, estimate the participation of social organizations, and improve the response capacity of the social assistance system in the face of major public health events, so as to better play the role of underwriting protection for people's livelihood.