Data

Adequacy of social safety net programs

What you should know about this indicator

Adequacy of social safety net programs is measured by the total transfer amount received by the population participating in social safety net programs as a share of their total welfare. Welfare is defined as the total income or total expenditure of beneficiary households. Social safety net programs include cash transfers and last resort programs, noncontributory social pensions, other cash transfers programs (child, family and orphan allowances, birth and death grants, disability benefits, and other allowances), conditional cash transfers, in-kind food transfers (food stamps and vouchers, food rations, supplementary feeding, and emergency food distribution), school feeding, other social assistance programs (housing allowances, scholarships, fee waivers, health subsidies, and other social assistance) and public works programs (cash for work and food for work). Estimates include both direct and indirect beneficiaries.

Limitations and exceptions: When interpreting ASPIRE performance indicators based on household surveys, it is important to note that the extent to which information on specific transfers and programs is captured in the household surveys can vary a lot across countries. Moreover, household surveys do not capture the universe of social protection programs in the country, in best practice cases just the largest programs. As a consequence, ASPIRE indicators are not fully comparable across program categories and countries; however, they provide approximate measures of social protection systems performance. In addition, there may be cases where ASPIRE performance indicators differ from official WB country reports as ASPIRE indicators are based on a first level analysis of original survey data and unified methodology that does not necessarily reflect country-specific knowledge and in depth country analysis relying on administrative program level data and/or imputations.

Source
Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 20, 2024
Next expected update
May 2025
Date range
2000–2021
Unit
% of total welfare of beneficiary households

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The World Development Indicators (WDI) is the primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources. It presents the most current and accurate global development data available, and includes national, regional and global estimates.

Retrieved on
May 20, 2024
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI).

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Citations

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To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Adequacy of social safety net programs”. Our World in Data (2024). Data adapted from World Bank. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/adequacy-of-social-safety-net-programs [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Adequacy of social safety net programs” [dataset]. World Bank, “World Development Indicators” [original data]. Retrieved December 3, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/adequacy-of-social-safety-net-programs