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Inclusion and Resilience: The Way Forward for Social Safety Nets in the Middle East and North Africa
grams, the propensity to know someone receiving assistance fluctuated across quintiles (for example, regarding cash transfers for students and Productive Families’ projects) or was mildly regressive (as in assistance from the Nasser Social Bank and Child Law Pension). For all but one SSN program in Lebanon and for all SSN programs in Tunisia, those in the wealthiest quintile were more likely to know someone receiving assistance than those in the poorest quintile. For example, more than 90 percent of respondents from the richest quintile knew someone who used hospital fee waivers, while only 60 percent of respondents from the poorest quintile could say the same. In Tunisia, most SSN participants had friends or family in the middle or top quintile; for virtually all programs, respondents in the bottom quintile were about 10–15 percent more likely to know an SSN program participant; for the middle quintile, that figure was 25 and 32 percent for the Program of Assistance to Needy Families (Programme National d’Aide aux Familles Nécessiteuses; PNAFN) and Caisse Nationale de Sécurité Sociale (CNSS) health cards, respectively. A diverse literature discusses whether public support for redistribution can best be obtained through loose or universal targeting, rather than through a narrow targeting of the most needy. Some researchers argue that targets are difficult to identify and that targeting is administratively difficult; for this reason, they predicate that loose targeting would be best for public support or even that a program should have both a universal and a targeted component for it to be politically sustainable (Gelbach and Pritchett 2002; Pritchett 2005; Sen 1995). However, earlier sections have shown that the nonpoor may also be ready to support redistribution—for instance, when they find inequality to be excessive—without expecting a direct individual gain. In other words, considerations beyond self-interest may influence public opinion in support of narrow targeting. One of them is the concern that public funds be used efficiently. For instance, De Janvry et al. (2005) showed that the expansion of Brazil’s Bolsa Escola program among the poor at the municipal level predicted positively mayors’ reelection, while high leakage to the nonpoor had the opposite effects. Therefore, the accuracy and level of targeting of existing programs matter not only for program effectiveness but also for programs’ political support.
SSN Design Features that Rally Support MENA SPEAKS collected data on respondents’ preferences related to design features of a hypothetical nonsubsidy SSN program. Specifically, the survey asked respondents (a) whether, in their opinion, this SSN pro-
The Political Economy of SSN Reforms in the Middle East and North Africa: What Do Citizens Want?
gram should support the poor or support specific groups of people; (b) whether the assistance should be provided in cash or in-kind; and (c) whether any conditions should be attached to continued support (and, if so, the preferences on specific conditions). Policy makers can use this wealth of information to gauge potential public support when designing new SSN programs or when reforming existing ones.
Categorical Targeting versus Targeting the Poor When asked whether they thought SSNs should focus mainly on serving the poor or specific groups of people (such as widows, orphans, the sick, and the elderly—whether or not members of those groups are poor), respondents in all four Middle Eastern and North African countries unequivocally supported targeting the poor, as shown in figure 4.15. The share of people who preferred categorical targeting ranged between 8 percent in Egypt and 16 percent in Lebanon. People who felt poor (based on the MENA SPEAKS subjective income question) were more likely to prefer SSNs targeted to the poor. In Egypt, for example, 96 percent of those who felt poor wanted SSNs to target the poor, as opposed to 87 percent of those who put themselves in the top two income categories. Interestingly, subjective income predicts preference on this question better than the more objective income quintiles: for example, although preference for targeting decreased monotonically with subjective income groups in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, when plotted against objective income quintiles, the lowest preference for targeting SSNs to the poor was in the middle quintiles for these countries.
Cash versus In-Kind Benefits Based on the MENA SPEAKS survey, most people prefer SSN programs to provide cash rather than goods (in-kind transfers). More than twothirds of respondents in each of the four countries under study expressed a preference for cash-based SSNs (from 68 percent in Lebanon to 85 percent in Jordan), as shown in figure 4.16, panel a. The relatively low preference for cash in Lebanon can probably be explained by its politicization, given that many political parties use cash to garner electoral support. In Egypt and Lebanon, the poor had a much stronger preference for cash-based SSNs than the self-identified upper-middle and wealthy groups; this can perhaps be attributed to a paternalistic view of the poor as being unable to spend cash wisely. Interestingly, in Jordan, those who categorized themselves as lower middle class had the highest preference for cash in SSNs, providing a potential support group for the government if it were to reform price subsidies or cash out its in-kind Food Security Program.
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