Social Protection and Poverty Reduction: Global Patterns and Some Targets

This paper argues that Social Protection needs to be on the post-2015 agenda as a key element of the discourse. Based on a global Social Protection data set, it estimates that social protection programs are currently preventing 150 million people from falling into poverty. Even if all low-income countries could achieve the very best targeting efficiency observed in the world, only 50% could halve the poverty gap through social protection. For half of low-income countries, and for over a fifth of all countries in the sample, the issue is one of budgetary adequacy, not targeting efficiency.