Safety Nets and Cash Transfers

The World Bank currently supports over 350 million individuals with social safety net programs worldwide.  COVID-19 saw the largest scale up of social safety net transfers in history.  And just last year, in response to the global food crisis, social protection responses more than doubled.

An estimated 36 percent of the poorest people escaped extreme poverty because of social safety nets, providing clear evidence that social safety net programs have a substantial impact in the global fight against poverty. The evidence base continues to mount on the value of layered social safety nets  in diverse settings such as  India, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and the Sahel.

Data shows that these programs lower inequality, and reduce the poverty gap by about 45 percent. These positive effects of safety net transfers hold true for low and middle-income countries alike.  

Yet in low-income countries around one in five of the world’s poorest people still lack safety net coverage.

Yet we know that safety nets cash transfers not only help nations invest in human capital, but also serve as a source of income for poor people, improving their standard of living.  Today, some 2.5 billion people are covered by safety net programs and some 650 million people or 56 percent of the poorest quintile.

Last Updated: Mar 28, 2024

Social safety nets can be defined as policies and programs that help individuals and families  manage risk and volatility , protect them from poverty and inequality , and help them to access economic opportunity . Social safety net – or social assistance -  programs are based on a core set of instruments including cash, in-kind and productive inclusion interventions.. Such programs build on country level delivery systems (for identification, payments, and social registries) to ensure that safety net transfers reach the right beneficiaries at the right time.

The scale up of social safety net programs is part of the World Bank’s broader strategy on social protection, which aspires to achieve universal social protection coverage by 2030.  In this context, social safety net programs focus on three core goals.

• Equity: This is essential for ensuring that poor and vulnerable people are given the support they need to reach a basic minimum level of consumption and well-being and, thus, for fostering equality of opportunity.
• Resilience:  This is helping to prevent people from falling into or falling deeper into poverty. It is especially true when a shock can cause negative coping responses such as reducing food consumption, selling productive assets, or withdrawing children from school for their labor as these actions can have permanent or long-lasting negative consequences.

Opportunity: This is to build human capital and help men and women access productive income-earning opportunities. Social Safety net programs increasingly provide a foundation to link to productive inclusion and job opportunities, especially for adolescent girls and women.

Last Updated: Mar 28, 2024

Social safety nets have positive and significant impacts on education, health, and food security, but also promote households’ ability to generate income that can lead to positive effects in local economies.

• In Egypt, the Takaful and Karama program covers 2.26 million households where 88% of the program's beneficiaries are women. The “Takaful” part of the program gives monthly conditional pensions to vulnerable families, while the “Karama” part gives non-conditional pensions to poor, elderly citizens above 65 years of age, and citizens with severe disabilities and diseases as well as orphans.
• To respond to the extreme drought in the Southern Africa region, cash transfers have become the primary response to support the recovery of disaster-affected population in Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique.
• Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program reaches about eight million people poor and chronically food insecure households in the country. Analysis shows that the direct effect of payments reduces poverty by 7%.
• In Madagascar, with support from the World Bank's Fund for the Poorest (IDA), cash transfers were provided to more than 80,000 poor households, while promoting nutrition, early childhood development, children school attendance and productive activities of families.
• In Peru, the Juntos cash transfer program helped address chronic malnutrition, reducing childhood stunting rate in half in just 8 years, from 28% in 2008 to 13% in 2016.

Last Updated: Mar 28, 2024

The two-week Social Safety Nets & Delivery Core Course (2019) provided participants with an in-depth understanding of the conceptual and practical issues on safety nets or social assistance as part of broader social protection systems. The course put participants center stage. Drawing from latest empirical evidence and state-of-the-art practices, a global talent pool of staff inside and outside the World Bank offered a blend of lectures, panels and interactive sessions designed to equip participants with the tools for understanding, connecting and adapting concepts and practices for different objectives and contexts.

The Social Safety Nets Core Course was held concurrently with a similar Core Courses on Jobs, Labor and Migration and Pensions.

Day 1 – Monday, Oct 28, 2019

1. Welcome and Framing Social Protection and Jobs Agenda 
Michal Rutkowski, Margaret Grosh [Presentation]

2. Protecting All: Risk Sharing for a Diverse and Diversifying World of Work 
Ugo Gentilini [Presentation], Gustavo Demarco [Presentation], Michael Weber [Presentation], Truman Packard [Presentation]
Moderator: Michal Rutkowski

3. Political Economy Factors in Social Protection Reform and Implementation 
Moderator: Margaret Grosh

4. Hot Topics in Social Protection Implementation 
ID and Social Registries: Tina George [Presentation]
G2P Payments: Robert Palacios [Presentation]
Data Protections: David Satola [Presentation]
Human Centered Design: John Blomquist [Presentation]
Using Behavioral Economics to Boost Impacts: Laura Rawlings [Presentation]
Moderator: Margaret Grosh

Day 2 – Tuesday, Oct 29, 2019

1. Social safety nets: a primer and course overview 
 Ugo Gentilini [Presentation]

2. Delivering safety nets: a framework 
 John Blomquist [Presentation]

3. Choices in cash transfers: key design parameters 
 Margaret Grosh [Presentation]

4. The economics and politics of safety nets: how to “make the case” 
 Aline Coudouel, Benedicte de la Briere, Iftikhar Malik and Manuel Salazar [Presentation]

Day 3 – Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019

1. Communication and outreach in social safety nets 
 Surat Nsour [Presentation]

2. Institutions and coordination 
 Tina George [Presentation]

3. Payments mechanisms, experiences and tools 
Silvia Baur-Yazbeck, Ioana Botea, John Gachigi, Ana Veronica Lopez, Amr Moubarack, Nilima Ramteke and Luz Rodriguez [Presentation]

4. Targeting: concepts and practice 
Phillippe Leite [Presentation]

5. Targeting: performance measurement and ASPIRE 
 Phillippe Leite, Oleksiy Ivaschenko and Claudia Rodriguez Alas [Presentation]

Day 4 – Thursday, Oct. 31, 2019

1. Social registries and integrated social information systems
 Phillippe Leite and Tina George [Presentation]

2. Case management in programs and services 
Sara Giannozzi [Presentation]

3. Monitoring safety nets implementation 
John Blomquist and Ines Rodriguez Caillava [Presentation]

Day 5 – Friday, Nov. 1, 2019

1. Safety nets and economic inclusion 
Colin Andrews [Presentation], Syed Hashemi [Presentation], Edmundo Murrugarra [Presentation]

2. Connecting transfers and activation 
 Matteo Morgandi [Presentation]

3. The power of data: ASPIRE 
 Oleksiy Ivaschenko, Usama Zafar [Presentation]

4. Public works as safety nets 
 Endeshaw Tadesse, Sarah Coll-Black [Presentation], Paul Bance [Presentation] and Arthur Alik-Lagrange [Presentation]

5. Social pensions: issues and perspectives 
 Robert Palacios [Presentation] and Margaret Grosh [Presentation]

Day 6 – Monday, Nov 4, 2019

1. Safety nets, human capital and early years investments 
Laura Rawlings, Julieta Trias, Steisianasari Mileiva, Patrick Premand and Rebekka Grun [Presentation]

2. Gender, violence and safety nets: cross-country evidence and practices 
 Mattias Lundberg, Aline Coudouel, Diana Jimena Arango and Alessandra Heinemann [Presentation]

3. Food-based safety nets: programs and evolution 
 Harold Alderman [Presentation]

4. Behavioral approaches to enhance cash transfers 
 Laura Rawlings, Andrea Vermehren, Saugato Datta and Josh Martin [Presentation]

Day 7 – Tuesday, Nov 5, 2019

1. Resilience, adaptive social protection and humanitarian assistance 
 Julie Dana, Thomas Bowen Vaughan, Patrick Premand, Asha Williams and Sarah Coll-Black [Presentation]

2. Safety nets in conflict and displacement settings 
 Rebekka Grun, Afrah Alawi Al-Ahmadi and Mirey Ovadiya [Presentation]

3. Adapting safety nets to urban areas 
 Ugo Gentilini, Ellen Hamilton, Judy Baker [Presentation], Andrea Vermehren [Presentation], Soraya Goga [Presentation]

4. Economic crises and energy subsidy reforms 
 Amr Moubarak and Adea Kryeziu [Presentation]

Day 8 – Wednesday, Nov 6, 2019

1. Financing social protection: issues and practices
 Alexander Pick [Presentation]

2. Evaluating safety nets 
Patrick Premand [Presentation]