The paper tracks recent changes in the components of social protection in Latin America, the reforms to social insurance in the 1990s and the growth of social assistance in the 2000s, and assesses their effects on poverty and inequality and implications for welfare institutions in the region....

Rapid population ageing and economic transformation in Asia raise the policy challenge of ensuring income security in old age. There is growing interest among policymakers in the potential role of noncontributory transfers as an instrument to address a variety of policy challenges, including old...

In this new version of the database we have included pilot social assistance programmes. A number of pilot cash transfer programmes have been introduced in Latin America, Asia and Africa in the last year or so, and a few more are in the design stage. Their scale and rationale suggest there is a...

This paper provides an overview of the recent extension of social protection in sub-Saharan Africa. It identifies two main ‘models’ of social protection in the region: the Southern Africa and Middle Africa models. It then assesses the contrasting policy processes behind these models and...

The Social Assistance in Developing Countries Database is a user-friendly tool that provides summary information on social assistance interventions in developing countries. It provides a summary of the evidence available on the effectiveness of social assistance interventions in developing...

In the first decade of the new century, social transfer programmes emerged as a new paradigm in the fight against poverty in the global South. These programmes currently reach more than 860 million people worldwide. This paper focuses on three policy questions: first, do programme objectives...

A growing impact evaluation literature on antipoverty transfer programmes in low‐ and middle‐income countries measures changes in utilitarian terms, at their unit value. The paper argues that valuing antipoverty transfers is more appropriately done within a framework of prioritarian social...