The long-term effects of Mexico's conditional cash transfer program, PROSPERA, on poor households are of great interest to policy makers and academics alike. This paper analyzes the long-term effects on the welfare of the original participant households and their offspring, about 20 years after...

The Iraqi Public Distribution System is the largest universal, in-kind subsidy system in the world. In 2012, the Public Distribution System transfers accounted for as much as 30 percent of incomes of the poorest 10 percent of the Iraqi population and provided 70 percent of the calories of the...

Interventions in highly insecure and fragile contexts are always confronted with the latent risk of not being able to implement the program as intended. Despite its high policy relevance, little is known about the impacts of program disruption or cancellation on beneficiaries. This study uses...

How does a locally-managed conditional cash transfer program impact trust in government? On the one hand, delivering monetary benefits and increasing interactions with government officials (elected and appointed) may increase trust. On the other hand, imposing paternalistic conditions, leading...

The paper seeks to take stock of some of the key APEC documents/reports relevant to social protection and safety net programs, and also of the experience of APEC member-economies, with special focus on the Philippines, in implementing social protection measures. In particular, it attempts to...

Since 2011, the government, through the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), has implemented the Social Pension (SocPen) Program which gives a noncontributory monthly pension of PHP 500 to qualified seniors, i.e., indigent Filipinos aged 60 and above. Initially, the DSWD had...

Although Cambodia has become one of the world's leaders in poverty reduction, two-thirds of its population remains poor or economically vulnerable, with a large number of households moving in and out of poverty. Cambodian households are exposed to a range of shocks that can have devastating...

This report presents the results of a diagnostic study on the targeting of social protection programs in Uzbekistan with a specific focus on low-income family allowances. The objective is to determine the extent to which current programs are reaching the poor and can reduce poverty, and...

This report profiles poverty and assesses the performance of the social assistance (SA) system in the Turkish Cypriot community (TCc). The aim of this report is to provide information and evidence-based analysis to policy-makers on the determinants of poverty in the TCc and on the effectiveness...

Targeted Social Assistance of Georgia is a last-resort social program that is considered a best practice among programs based on proxy means testing (PMT). It achieves high targeting accuracy for a relatively high level of poverty incidence. In 2013, the government of Georgia embarked on the...