The Safety Net

12 Key excerpts on "The Safety Net"

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  Social Safety Nets and Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries

  • Jannatul Ferdous, AKM Ahsan Ullah(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  A social safety net is a system that provides assistance to persons at risk of or affected by poverty or other forms of adversity without a quid pro quo. Governments may provide these transfers in the form of cash, vouchers, or in-kind benefits to specific groups of poor people or to the poor as a whole, either unconditionally or “conditionally” (in exchange for “socially good” behaviour on the part of recipients). Comprehensive social protection systems also include insurance-related interventions (such as health insurance and pensions) and a variety of work-oriented initiatives aimed at minimizing vulnerability and poverty.

  Social protection encompasses six types of interventions, including SSNs or social assistance, social security, labour market initiatives, natural disaster management, essentials for those in need, and adaptive instruments in the form of laws and policies to protect women from violence, children from early marriage, and people from exploitation such as forced labour and child labour.

  “Safety nets” is the term used to describe social initiatives aimed at supporting those at the bottom of society, particularly those whose stability is challenged by economic progress and change. This is an enduring social concern. After World War II, the United States used food aid as a safety net to rebuild war-ravaged Europe and transform it into a system of sustainable economic growth. This system was modelled after the Poor Laws in England, which provided food stamps to farmers and workers who had been displaced by enclosures and foreign trade in Europe from the 15th to the 19th centuries. Food stamps, the Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Programme, school lunch programmes, and meals at senior centres are examples of current food-based safety net programmes used in the United States to promote healthy eating and expand educational opportunities for residents of all ages. The question naturally arises as to how food aid fits into social protection policies in developing and underdeveloped countries? What does the future of food aid look like, given both economic theory and actual contexts? By asking this question, we hope to gain a better understanding of the potential and actual impacts of food aid and use this information to inform the design of future safety nets in developing countries.

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  Safety Nets in Africa

  Effective Mechanisms to Reach the Poor and Most Vulnerable

  • Carlo del Ninno, Bradford Mills(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • World Bank

    (Publisher)

  Notes 1. Ravallion, Ferreira, and Leite (2007) show how economic growth and social policies can contribute to poverty reduction in Brazil. 2. Safety nets are often referred to as social assistance. The term “safety nets” is used here for consistency with other World Bank publications. 14 SAFETY NETS IN AFRICA 3. For a definition and a comprehensive treatment of the role of safety nets in social protection programs, see Grosh et al. (2008). For evaluations of effective social protection programs, see de Janvry et al. (2006), Skoufias (2007), and Fiszbein and Schady (2009). For Sub-Saharan Africa, see Woolard and Leibbrandt (2010) and Agüero, Carter, and Woolard (2006). 4. Some universal programs are designed to limit enrollment through self-targeting. See Subbarao et al. (2012) for a review of the role of self-targeted public assistance programs in African social safety nets. 5. For example, a recent report for the Seychelles (Guven 2013) indicates that as the share of elderly in the total population increases over time and benefits are adjusted at 1 percent over the inflation rate to retain their real value, the additional fiscal cost will be on the order of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). In Lesotho, social pensions cover all citizens from age 70 on and involve a monthly transfer to about 84,000 people. The transfer accounts for more than 2 percent of GDP and constitutes by far the largest component of social expenditure (even larger than school feeding). 6. The choice of universal or targeted benefits remains an open debate, and more empirical evidence is needed. 7. Smith and Subbarao (2003) argue that information, administrative, and fiscal constraints render the task of identifying and reaching the poorest groups diffi cult and recommend that programs be self-targeted, with minimal administrative inputs.

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  Out of Reach

  Place, Poverty, and the New American Welfare State

  • Scott W. Allard(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  Not only is The Safety Net mismatched, but it is most volatile and unstable in disadvantaged communities. The manner in which we help poor people as a society does not appear to be well matched or well suited to the needs of society. Does a safety net that is out of reach with respect to need reflect the indi ff er-ence of Americans toward the poor? Not necessarily. Despite mismatches and unmet needs, many Americans indicate considerable support for public and private programs in job training and education to help low-income adults. Child care and health insurance programs for families near and below the poverty line have expanded in recent years. Even more telling, the American public donates billions of dollars and millions of volunteer hours each year to charitable organizations that help disadvantaged populations. Support for social welfare policy in the United States, however, is shaped by values of economic individualism, the work ethic, and self-determination. Many Americans believe that there is enough economic opportunity for indi-viduals to find a job and advance if they work hard enough. Fewer Americans are concerned about inequalities in economic opportunity. As a result, cash as-sistance programs for working-age populations receive much weaker support than programs that are designed to promote work and opportunity. Even though most Americans are unaware of the degree to which antipoverty assis-tance is composed of programs supporting work, much safety net assistance comes in the form of community-based employment assistance, child care, adult education, and other social service programs that provide critical help to low-income workers and job seekers. The tens of billions of dollars in social ser-vice programs administered each year are consistent with both the commit-ment of Americans to support the poor and the work ethic that firmly under-lies American attitudes about social assistance.

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  Ending Hunger Worldwide

  • George Kent(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Some observers have suggested that social safety nets should be like trampolines, helping people who have fallen to bounce back up. That is a nice idea, but it might be difficult to implement. The first concern should be to ensure that The Safety Net is dependable, with no tears in it.

  We are not calling for safety nets instead of other approaches that reach to the roots of the problem. Programs that build human capital and facilitate people in providing for themselves certainly are preferable. They should be designed to minimize people’s dependence on The Safety Net. But the reality is that such programs are often inadequate, and some backstop is needed to protect people from extreme adversity. In an ideal world, strong and effective safety nets would be in place, but rarely used.

  Guaranteed Safety Nets

  Social service programs generally specify criteria of eligibility and the packages of services that people who meet the criteria are supposed to get. Often, people don’t get what they are supposed to get. A study of child survival programs shows that “typically fewer than half of all children are reached by any given intervention.”

  Children belonging to the poorest families are consistently less likely to receive preventive and curative interventions than those from other families.… The fact that many children do not receive any intervention is a painful example of social exclusion as applied to child survival.… The odds are stacked against the poorest children, who tend to have higher exposure to disease, lower coverage of preventive and curative interventions, less access to health care at all levels, and when services are available, poorer quality of care than children who are less poor.” (Victora et al. 2005, 1460, 1464)

  Safety nets are often flawed in rich countries as well. In the Netherlands, for example:

  In practice, not everyone can keep his or her head above water. For many the red tape is too complex. Those with no permanent address or place of residence find it hard to gain access to municipal facilities. People with mental problems don’t have an easy time of it. (Hospes and van der Meulen 2009, 23)

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  Social Protection, Pastoralism and Resilience in Ethiopia

  Lessons for Sub-Saharan Africa

  • Zeremariam Fre, Bereket Tsegay, Araya M. Teka, Nicole Kenton, John Livingstone, Zeremariam Fre, Bereket Tsegay, Araya M. Teka, Nicole Kenton, John Livingstone(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The performance of The Safety Net programmes is key to having an effective PRSP nexus that enhances pastoralists’ resilience and builds evidence. Broadly, the evidence provided by various actors and independent consultants from assessments of the impacts of social assistance programmes shows mixed results. Measuring effectiveness appears to present particular difficulties because social protection targets the poorest and most vulnerable groups in society. That is, efforts to measure short-term and long-term livelihood improvements at the same time have been found to conflict with each other. There are multiple objectives. The Safety Net approach to shocks aims to address immediate food and water supplies, improve food security levels, provide basic social services and boost the confidence, or ability, of the target group to recover from disasters. Evidence produced by the World Bank from safety net impact evaluations in 2014, assessing 168 projects, showed ‘positive and significant impacts on education, access to health, household economic empowerment and, in the case of cash transfers, positive spillover effects on the local economy’ (Honorati et al., 2015).

  The Safety Net appraisal methodologies undertaken include standard programme evaluation tools (input–output), assessing efficiency and effectiveness, participatory evaluations, social audits and the tracking of hard economic or statistical data (Rawlings et al., 2013:16). All have been used in SSA, at different times and to differing extents, depending on the size and scope of The Safety Net programme concerned and the particular objectives set. For example, some studies have set out specifically to assess the relationships between social protection programmes and electoral politics. If the motive of politicians in establishing programmes is to gain political capital, there is evidence showing a strong correlation between safety net policies and election results. Browne argues that outcomes in local-level politics may be determined by the presence of effective social assistance, enabling local leaders to secure re-election and thus providing a political incentive for the introduction of programmes (2014:2; see also UNCDF and UNDP, 2011).

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  Turmoil at Twenty

  Recession, Recovery, and Reform in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

  • Pradeep Mitra, Marcelo Selowsky, Juan Zalduendo(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • World Bank

    (Publisher)

  Safety nets or social assistance programs (other than contributory pen- sion programs and contributory unemployment benefits programs) can be leveraged to reach the poor. But the ability to respond quickly depends criti- cally on the quality of the existing programs. A rapid response would focus on expanding existing safety nets that have a proven track record in target- ing social benefits to the poorest fifth of households. This chapter shows that most countries in the region have at least one well targeted safety net program that can be scaled up in times of crisis. Well targeted programs should be pro- tected and even expanded, either in coverage or by “topping-up” benefits. 1 Existing social assistance programs Total spending on social assistance averages 1.7 percent of GDP in the region but there is substantial variation across countries, ranging from 0.5 percent of GDP in Tajikistan through 2.0 percent in Ukraine to around 4.0 percent in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (figure 4.1). Spending on benefits for war veterans is significant in the former Yugoslav republics. About half of ECA countries spend about the same as or more than Argentina and Brazil—middle-income countries in Latin America with the highest spending as a share of GDP—but most ECA countries are below the OECD average of 2.5 percent of GDP. 1. This chapter is based on the material developed in Lindert (in progress) and Nguyen, Sundaram, and Tesliuc (in progress). Data on comparator countries comes from Lindert et. al 2006. SCALING UP SOCIAL SAFETY NETS 165 Almost all ECA countries operate some mix of safety nets programs. The mix is similar to that of the OECD countries, with an emphasis on family allowances such as child allowances and birth grants, noncontributory pen- sions, heating and housing allowances, and targeted antipoverty programs.

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  The Crisis of Caregiving

  Social Welfare Policy in the United States

  • B. Mandell(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  A P P E N D I X A Current Safety Net Programs The Safety Net programs that have the most political protection are those that include the middle class as well as the poor, such as Social Security and Medicare. Some programs have the political protection of powerful lobbies, such as food stamps and nutrition programs that are supported by the agri- cultural lobby. Medicaid has some protection from doctors, pharmacists, nursing homes, and middle-class people who need it to pay for their relatives’ nursing home care. Programs that serve only the poor, such as TANF, fare badly in the political arena. Following is a description of the major govern- ment safety net programs in the United States: Social Security (OASDI, Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance) was enacted in 1935 during the Great Depression. It was won through grass roots struggles and was a response to growing unrest about unemployment. Aiming to get older people out of the labor market by providing them with pensions, it freed up jobs for younger workers and so helped to quell growing unrest. It now provides income protection to 156 million workers and provides benefits to 44 million retirees, people with disabilities, widow(er)s, and children. Conservatives want to privatize it, but have so far failed. Treasury chief Henry Paulson vowed in 2006 to continue the fight to overhaul Social Security, “although his two predecessors were carried off the field after bruising political battles.” 1 President Obama has talked about “look- ing at entitlements,” and a commission composed of people in favor of privatizing Social Security, including Paul Peterson, is studying the mat- ter. Polling data show that not having enough money for retirement is at the top of Americans’ economic concerns, and they will no doubt resist privatization. People have seen the value of their 401Ks drop as the stock market collapsed.

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  Inclusion and Resilience

  The Way Forward for Social Safety Nets in the Middle East and North Africa

  • Joana Silva, Victoria Levin, Matteo Morgandi(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • World Bank

    (Publisher)

  43 The Framework for Social Safety Net Reform in the Middle East and North Africa The Growing Need for Safety Nets Recent economic and social transitions in the Middle East and North Africa have refocused attention on the need for greater social inclusion, livelihood, and resilience. Although sustained growth in many of the re-gion’s countries has pulled people out of poverty and into the middle class, economic progress has yet to reach many families who face persis-tent poverty, unemployment, disability, and illness. And many more families in the Middle East and North Africa are vulnerable to economic shocks, natural disasters, and political or other crises. Without a safety net, poor families who are systematically unable to afford their basic needs are likely to disengage socially; malnourished children are more likely to become poor adults; and near-poor families who lose their liveli-hoods as a consequence of shocks are likely to fall into poverty. In fact, economic anxiety in the region is on the rise. Figure 1.1 depicts the share of people who report being in need for lack of means (Gallup and World Bank 2011). In particular, the following question was posed: “Were there times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?” The share of the population who responded in the affirmative in the Arab Republic of Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia in 2011 was significantly higher than in 2009, having increased from 23 to 44 percent in Egypt, from 7 to 16 percent in Jordan, and from 11 to 18 percent in Tunisia. By providing assistance to the poor and vulnerable, social safety nets (SSNs) can improve this situa-tion, serving as a springboard to help citizens become more independent and share in the benefits of economic progress (see box 1.1 for the defini-tion of SSNs). Most Middle Eastern and North African countries responded to the 2008–09 food, fuel, and financial crisis and to the early Arab Spring unrest CHAPTER 1

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  Social Safety Nets : Issues and Recent Experience

  • INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND(Author)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND

    (Publisher)

  Attempts are under way in some countries to institute income support programs for individuals who fall below the poverty threshold (the Russian Federation). Other countries are either running this type of program relatively successfully (former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) or are planning to implement one soon (Estonia). Some countries (Albania, Latvia, and Poland) are also using the social assistance programs to provide income support to the long-term unemployed.

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  Summary and Conclusions

  In the short term, social safety nets are meant to protect the vulnerable from the negative effects of reform measures. In this way, they enhance the sustainability and acceptability of reform programs. Using a stylized model and drawing on experiences of economies currently undergoing transition, this chapter has highlighted the interaction between social safety nets and the budget. One message that emerges is that increasing the cost-effectiveness of social safety net expenditures is not only a social policy issue but also an important consideration for macroeconomic stability and sustainability.

  The other important message that emerges from the numerical example is that, in the short term, improved targeting of subsidies provides the maximum budgetary savings. For instance, in the stylized economy, the bulk of the estimated expenditure savings are a result of the improved targeting of the generalized subsidies. The numerical example also shows that significant financial savings are feasible from reforming pensions while improving their adequacy. Although the short-term impact of some measures (such as the raising of retirement ages) is relatively small, it can be quite significant over a period of time.

  There has been some discussion that strengthening social safety nets in transition economies would require new foreign financing. The above analysis shows that this is not necessarily true, since possibilities exist for reducing the cost of ongoing programs and raising additional revenues without increasing the payroll tax.

  This chapter has enumerated various options for reforming social safety net expenditures. Unfortunately, the survey of country experiences showed that, with the exception of limited rationalization of commodity subsidies, the success to date in improving the cost-effectiveness of other elements of safety nets has been rather limited. This could be partly because many countries, particularly in the BRO, are still in the initial stages of transition. Political considerations, too, have played a role—the individuals likely to lose benefits have prevented reforms from taking place.

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  Realizing the Full Potential of Social Safety Nets in Africa

  • Kathleen Beegle, Aline Coudouel, Emma Monsalve(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • World Bank

    (Publisher)

  The evidence on credit access is less clear: evaluations reflect on the increased creditworthiness of households SOCIAL SAFETY NETS AND POVERTY REDUCTION, RESILIENCE, AND OPPORTUNITY 103 receiving transfers in, for instance, Ghana LEAP and Kenya HSNP, but there is little evidence that more credit has been forthcoming (Handa et al. 2013; Merttens et al. 2013). In the Ghana LEAP and the Zambia Child Grant Program, the social safety nets help beneficiaries realign social networks and, in some cases, improve the bargaining power of women (Handa et al. 2013; Seidenfeld, Handa, and Tembo 2013). Overall, the policy implication is that social safety nets may have a major impact in boosting savings for improved risk management, but they are not suffi cient for households to buffer completely against shocks independently. Nonetheless, social safety net programs are not significantly crowding out pri-vate transfers and are not likely to impact adversely or substitute for other risk management strategies. Increasing Opportunities through Social Safety Nets Human capital development and productive inclusion are two important dimensions of the effort to foster opportunity. The dimension of human capital development involves the recognition that social safety nets have long been viewed as a tool for promoting investments in education and health care among children. Well-established conditional cash transfer pro-grams in Latin America, such as Bolsa Família in Brazil and Prospera in Mexico, have the core objective of enabling poor families in rural and urban communities to invest in the human capital of their children by improving outcomes in education, health, and nutrition (Fiszbein and Schady 2009). Compelling evidence documents the positive impacts of these programs, including their longer-term effects, which vary from positive to more mixed (Baez and Camacho 2011; Behrman, Parker, and Todd 2011; Gertler, Martinez, and Rubio-Codina 2012).

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  Places in Need

  The Changing Geography of Poverty

  • Scott W. Allard, Scott Allard(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Russell Sage Foundation

    (Publisher)

  Researchers and policymakers also commonly focus on the state-level policy decisions that affect program adoption, caseload numbers, and benefit levels. State government has come to play a more prominent role in the financing and administration of a number of antipoverty policies in the last several decades. At times states are allowed discretion to set more generous eligibility guidelines and extend benefits to a wider array of low-income households. States also have authority in some instances to set more restrictive or punitive policies governing eligibility or the receipt of benefits. Often what results is a loose patchwork of policies and programs, with the states offering different bundles of programs and benefits. Safety net response to rising poverty, therefore, can vary widely from state to state.

  The response of the modern safety net to changes in the spatial distribution of poverty also is shaped powerfully by local capacity, governance structures, and institutions. Local government often does not have formal authority over safety net policy formulation or financing. Many safety net programs, however, do have local administrative contact points where individuals must apply for assistance, be processed for eligibility, and receive assistance. A variety of local government entities are involved in the provision of assistance to low-income populations. Municipalities and townships can provide a range of assistance with material need, youth programming, and services for the elderly.4 County government departments, school districts, and municipalities all administer federal and state-funded antipoverty programs, at times with own-source revenue included. Many federal and state-funded programs are delivered through community-based nonprofit organizations, which often offer a wide variety of publicly and privately financed programs of assistance to the poor. For example, with the expansion of food stamps, Medicaid, and other publicly funded support services in the last several decades, county human service offices have become an important nexus of local safety net activity.

  In sorting out how The Safety Net might respond to the changing geography of poverty, it is important to consider how federal and state spending over the past fifty years has favored the development of safety net capacity in urban centers over suburban areas. The policy imperatives and strategic considerations that shape the will and ability of local places to respond to need are of significance, particularly when local places are given discretion or asked to commit own-source revenue. To understand how The Safety Net responds to the changing geography of poverty, therefore, we also should understand how the costs, financing, and responsibilities for administration of different safety net programs are spread between the federal, state, and local levels of government. In this section, I briefly review the urban roots of many public safety net programs and private philanthropic efforts. Such policies map cleanly onto the institutional imperatives and political economic considerations confronting urban and suburban municipalities. These institutional imperatives provide a set of expectations about why and when safety net programs are most likely to be responsive to changes in the geography of poverty.

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  It Takes a Nation

  A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty - Updated Edition

  • Rebecca M. Blank(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  Given the problems facing less-skilled workers in the labor market, discussed in the previous chapter, there will be no easy, quick, or cheap way for states to move public assistance recipients into economic self-sufficiency through employment. For programs to maintain their funding and political support, it will be increasingly important to have evidence demonstrating their effectiveness. This means that reliable research, evaluating programs and their effects, may become increasingly important in the public discussion. It will also be impor-tant to build political coalitions that support and protect effective programs in the midst of budget-cutting fervor. Overall, we are moving farther away from a system that provides direct cash assistance payments to low-income families, toward a system that in-creasingly conditions its assistance much more closely on particular groups that meet behavioral as well as income qualifications. Dollars are shifting toward work-connected programs, through increases in the EITC, more vigor-ous child support collection efforts, and subsidized job placement and training efforts (all discussed in more detail in the remainder of this chapter). It is not clear that these reconfigured public assistance programs will provide either a cheaper or a more effective safety net than the one we have at present. It will be different, with a different set of management and incentive problems than are imbedded in the current antipoverty system. 3.2 T H E SOCIAL SAFETY N E T I N OPERATION SUMMARY. This section demonstrates the combined effect of existing so-cial safety net programs on the economic resources available to families. • CHANGING POLICY • 95 The EITC and Food Stamps supplement the incomes of low-income mar-ried couples with one or two workers, helping them escape poverty. The examples in this section continue to highlight the problem of escaping poverty among single mothers and their children, however.

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