Publication: Social Protection Program Spending and Household Welfare in Ghana
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2023-09-15
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2023-09-15
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Ghana administers multiple social protection programs. One of these, pensions provided by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust, has a long history, but others—the Ghana School Feeding Programme, Labor-Intensive Public Works program, Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty program, and National Health Insurance Scheme—have been introduced and expanded only over the past two decades. Social Protection Program Spending and Household Welfare in Ghana assesses the performance of the government of Ghana’s main social assistance and social insurance programs. The study discusses the programs’ main design and implementation parameters; summarizes existing evaluative and operational research; and examines the patterns and trends in program benefit spending, using government administrative data, and the programs’ coverage rates, incidence, and effectiveness for reducing poverty and inequality, using recent national household sample survey data. Furthermore, the study examines the relationship between household participation in social assistance programs and exposure to adverse covariate shocks—specifically, possible weather-related shocks—on the basis of high-resolution climate risk maps for the country.
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“Younger, Stephen D.; Raju, Dhushyanth; Dadzie, Christabel E.. 2023. Social Protection Program Spending and Household Welfare in Ghana. International Development in Focus. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/40356 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Social Protection Program Spending and Household Welfare in Ghana(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-05-01)Ghana administers multiple social protection programs. One, pensions provided by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust, has a long history, but the rest of the programs have been introduced and expanded over the past two decades. This study assesses the performance of the government of Ghana’s main social assistance and social insurance programs. It discusses the main design and implementation parameters of the programs and summarizes existing evaluative and operational research. The study also examines patterns and trends in program benefit spending, based on government administrative data, and the coverage rates of the programs, their incidence, and their effectiveness in reducing poverty and inequality, based on recent national household sample survey data. Further, the study examines the relationship between household participation in social assistance programs and exposure to adverse covariate shocks, specifically, possible weather-related shocks, based on high-resolution climate risk maps for the countryPublication Welfare, Shocks, and Government Spending on Social Protection Programs in Lesotho(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-01)This paper assesses the performance of government spending on social protection programs in reducing poverty and inequality in Lesotho, applying benefit incidence and microsimulation methods to 2017-2018 household survey data. The paper investigates the distributional effects of actual spending on social protection programs as well as those of a hypothetical alternative in which the spending is targeted through a proxy means test (PMT) formula used by the government for some programs. In addition, the paper explores the responsiveness of social protection programs to adverse shocks commonly reported by households in Lesotho, where recent natural shocks have had substantial economic effects.Publication Government Social Protection Programme Spending and Household Welfare in Lesotho(John Wiley and Sons, 2023-03-16)Lesotho has notably high levels of poverty and inequality despite a high level of government spending on social protection programmes. We assess the performance of this spending in reducing consumption poverty and inequality, applying benefit incidence and microsimulation methods to 2017/2018 household survey data. We investigate the distributional effects of actual spending as well as those of a hypothetical alternative in which the spending is targeted through a proxy means test (PMT) formula used by the government for some programmes. We find that government spending on social protection programmes in Lesotho substantially reduces poverty and inequality. For most programmes, the hypothetical alternative of targeting spending to poorer households through the government's PMT formula would have no better distributional effects than current programme spending. The exception is postsecondary education bursaries, which are costly and regressive. Retaining bursaries only for poorer students, and reallocating the outlay this saves to a transfer targeted to poorer households through the government's PMT formula, could reduce poverty and inequality significantly.Publication Social Assistance Programs and Household Welfare in Eswatini(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06)Eswatini has notably high levels of poverty and inequality. Recurrent, negative shocks are an important contributing factor. This study assesses the performance of the largest social assistance programs in Eswatini, based on 2016/17 national household survey data. It examines the coverage rates of these programs, and their incidence and effectiveness in reducing poverty and inequality. The study also examines the association between program participation and negative shocks reported by households, in particular, drought and food price shocks associated with the 2015-2016 El Niño event. Across programs, benefits are concentrated among poor households. However, the performance of programs in reducing poverty and inequality tends to be limited because of low intended or actual benefit levels and shortfalls in intended or actual coverage of the poor. Households that receive program benefits are more likely to report a drought shock. Except in the case of emergency food aid, which is provided ex post, we interpret this pattern to indicate that programs tend to provide ex-ante coverage to those vulnerable to this shock. 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