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Inclusion and Resilience: The Way Forward for Social Safety Nets in the Middle East and North Africa
The Current State of Social Safety Nets in the Middle East and North Africa
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FIGURE 3.10
Nonsubsidy SSN Program Mix by Targeting Type, Middle East and North Africa, c. 2008–11
Beneficiary Incidence of Nonsubsidy SSNs in the Middle East and North Africa Compared with World and Other Regions, c. 2002–10
100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Source: Authors’ calculations based on MENA SSN Inventory. For a list of programs in the inventory, see appendix C.
25 20 15 10 5
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Distribution of SSN beneficiaries, %
45
in
Share of SSN programs, %
FIGURE 3.9
Richest quintile
Note: SSN = social safety net.
Sources: Middle East and North Africa: Authors’ calculations based on data from national household surveys; data for other regions and world from World Bank 2012a.
Since 2009, targeting performance in West Bank and Gaza has improved further, given the creation of the unified Cash Transfer Program (CTP) in 2010, which uses a PMT targeting mechanism and a unified payment scheme. Indeed, a recent targeting assessment of the CTP confirmed that more than 80 percent of beneficiaries of this program are in the bottom 20 percent of the population. Thus, CTP is poised to become one of the most advanced cash assistance programs in the Middle East and North Africa and may serve as a model of best practices elsewhere in the region. In contrast, in Djibouti and Morocco, the richest quintile represents the same share of SSN beneficiaries as the poorest quintile, implying little targeting, if any. In the most extreme case of Iraq, the distribution of beneficiaries is skewed toward the rich, with the top quintile making up almost 30 percent of all SSN beneficiaries. A comparison with other regions, using ASPIRE, confirms the underperformance of the Middle East and North Africa’s SSNs in terms of beneficiary incidence: in all the other three regions in the comparison, the bottom quintile constitutes 30 percent or more of SSN beneficiaries, with Latin America and the Caribbean leading the world at 36 percent. There is a strong positive correlation between targeting accuracy and economic development (as shown in figure 3A.1, panel b), but there is
Note: SSN = social safety net. All regional averages are population-weighted.
great dispersion in the performance of Middle Eastern and North African economies relative to development peers. Egypt, Jordan, West Bank and Gaza, and the Republic of Yemen are above the trend line, which means that the targeting accuracy of their SSNs is higher than would be predicted by their levels of GDP per capita. On the other end of the spectrum, Djibouti, Iraq, and Morocco all find themselves below the trend line, so their SSNs’ targeting is worse than that of their development peers. In a well-targeted, progressive SSN program, the bottom quintile receives the most transfers, with the share of transfers declining as wealth increases. As shown in figure 3A.2, the only program in the Middle East and North Africa that appears to fit this description is Jordan’s NAF, which has a steep negative gradient, with the richest two quintiles cumulatively receiving less than 20 percent of all NAF transfers (see box 3.2 for a description of NAF’s targeting methods). In contrast, in Iraq, a mere 2 percent of all SSN benefits go to the poorest quintile, while the richest quintile captures 43 percent of program resources, making this program highly regressive. In terms of benefit incidence, therefore, Jordan’s NAF