The Atlas of Social Protection: Indicators of Resilience and Equity (ASPIRE) database of the World Bank Group is the primary source of this book. This appendix provides ASPIRE’s definitions, methodology, and data sources for generating public expenditure and performance indicators. Further information is available in Data Sources and Methodology of the ASPIRE website.1
As discussed in Chapter 1, social protection and labor (SPL) generally fall into three main categories:
1. Social safety net (SSN)/social assistance (SA) programs are noncontributory interventions that are designed to help individuals and households cope with chronic poverty, destitution, and vulnerability. Potential beneficiaries are not required to pay a premium (contribute) to access benefits. SSN/SA programs target the poor and vulnerable.
2. Social insurance is a contributory intervention that is designed to help individuals manage sudden changes in income due to old age, sickness, disability, or natural disaster. Individuals pay insurance premiums to be eligible for coverage or contribute a percentage of their earnings to an insurance scheme to access benefits, which link to the total years and amount of contributions. Examples of social insurance programs include contributory old-age, survivor, and disability pensions; sick leave and maternity/paternity benefits; and health insurance coverage.
3. Labor market programs can be contributory or noncontributory and are designed to help protect individuals against loss of income from unemployment (passive labor market policies) or help individuals acquire skills and connect them to labor markets (active labor market policies). Unemployment insurance and early retirement incentives are examples of passive labor market policies, while training, employment intermediation services, and wage subsidies are examples of active policies.
For cross-country comparability, this book adheres to the ASPIRE harmonized classification of SPL programs. ASPIRE groups SPL programs into three program areas (social safety nets social assistance, social insurance, and labor markets) with 12 harmonized categories based on program objectives. While Chapter 1 discusses the SSN/SA classification, the information in this appendix is more extensive.
This standardization is applied to each country in the ASPIRE database to generate comparable expenditure and performance indicators (see table A.1).
TABLE A.1 ASPIRE Social Protection and Labor Program Classification
Program category |
Program subcategory |
Social safety net/social assistance |
|
Unconditional cash transfers |
Poverty-targeted cash transfers and last-resort programs |
|
Family, children, and orphan allowances (including benefits for vulnerable children) |
|
Noncontributory funeral grants, burial allowances |
|
Emergency cash support (including support to refugees and returning migrants) |
|
Public charity, including zakāt |
Conditional cash transfers |
Conditional cash transfers |
Social pensions (noncontributory) |
Old-age social pensions |
|
Disability benefits, war victim noncontributory benefits |
|
Survivorship benefits |
Food and in-kind transfers |
Food stamps, rations, and vouchers |
|
Food distribution programs |
|
Nutritional programs (therapeutic, supplementary feeding, and people living with HIV) |
|
School supplies (free textbooks and uniforms) |
|
In-kind and nonfood emergency support |
|
Other in-kind transfers |
School feeding |
School feeding |
Public works, workfare, and direct job creation |
Cash for work |
|
Food for work (including food for training and for assets) |
Fee waivers and targeted subsidies |
Health insurance exemptions and reduced medical fees |
|
Education fee waivers |
|
Food subsidies |
|
Housing subsidies and allowances |
|
Utility and electricity subsidies and allowances |
|
Agricultural inputs subsidies |
|
Transportation benefits |
Other social assistance |
Scholarships, education benefits |
|
Social care services, transfers for caregivers (care for children, youth, family, disabled, and older persons) |
|
Tax exemptions |
|
Other |
Social insurance |
|
Contributory pensions |
Old-age pension (all schemes: national, civil servants, veterans, and other special categories) |
|
Survivors pension (all schemes: national, civil servants, veterans, and other special categories) |
|
Disability pension (all schemes: national, civil servants, veterans, and other special categories) |
Other social insurance |
Occupational injury benefits |
|
Paid sick leave |
|
Health |
|
Maternity and paternity benefits |
|
Contributory grants (insurance) |
|
Other social insurance |
Labor market |
|
Labor market policy measures (active labor market programs) |
Labor market services and intermediation through public employment services |
|
Training (vocational, life skills, and cash for training) |
|
Employment incentives and wage subsidies |
|
Employment measures for the disabled |
|
Entrepreneurship support and startup incentives (cash and in-kind grants, microcredit) |
|
Job rotation and job sharing |
|
Other active labor market programs |
Labor market policy support (passive labor market programs) |
Out-of-work income maintenance (contributory unemployment benefits) |
|
Out-of-work income maintenance (noncontributory employment benefits) |
|
Benefits for early retirement |
Source: ASPIRE.
Note: ASPIRE = Atlas of Social Protection: Indicators of Resilience and Equity.
The ASPIRE dataset has two main sources of information: administrative data and household survey data. The ASPIRE administrative database sources include primary and secondary sources of data. Program-level administrative data are used to generate public expenditure indicators and the number of beneficiaries.
Household survey data for 96 countries are used to generate the performance indicators (see appendix B for a full list of the surveys). Those cover national representative surveys with information on income, consumption, and SPL programs, including the following: Household Income and Expenditure/Budget Surveys, Living Standard Measurement Surveys, Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys, Surveys on Income and Living Conditions, and Welfare Monitoring Surveys. The book only uses the latest year for each country and only if the data are not older than 2008; under this criterion, 20 countries were excluded. In addition, countries were excluded where the surveys did not have social safety nets information.
As of October of 2017, the ASPIRE administrative database included information on the number of beneficiaries for 142 countries (appendix C) and program-level spending data for 124 countries (see appendix D).
The book uses only the latest year data available for each country and only if the data are not older than 2010. For four countries (Bhutan, Jordan, Marshal Islands, and Vanuatu), the latest available year is 2009 and includes only total SSN spending. To ensure comparability and aggregation in spending across programs, the book first divides program-level spending by the corresponding year GDP for which the program data are available (only active/ongoing programs are used). Overall spending for SSN programs in the country is then approximated by summing up all program shares as a percentage of GDP. For each country, the book then provides the total SSN spending (as percentage of GDP), total spending without health fee waivers (as a percentage of GPD), and the spending (as a percentage of GDP) on the SSN/SA specific component (see appendix D).
To calculate program expenditures, the book considers all program spending no matter whether it is government- or donor-financed. When calculating averages (global or regional), all countries are assumed to have equal weight (in other words, simple averages are calculated). Country GDP is taken from the World Development Indicators database. Timor-Leste data on GDP is taken from the World Economic Outlook database. Average spending on SSNs for member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (Hungary, Slovak Republic, and Slovenia) and for OECD averages are based on the OECD Social Expenditure Database (SOCX) by combining “family” and “other social policy functions” as the closest approximation to noncontributory safety nets, as defined in this book.
Household surveys are reviewed to identify SPL program information. Individual variables are generated for each SPL program that is captured in the survey; the individual variables are then grouped into the 12 SPL harmonized program categories. Performance indicators are generated using the harmonized program variables. Household weights are used to expand the results to the total population of each country.
For cross-country comparability, all monetary variables are expressed in 2011 prices and daily purchasing power parity (PPP) in U.S. dollars. The consumption or income aggregates used to rank households by their welfare distribution are validated by the World Bank regional poverty teams.
The book uses two definitions of poverty: relative poverty (individuals in the poorest 20 percent of the welfare distribution), and absolute poverty (individuals living on less than $1.90 purchasing power parity a day). Pre-transfer welfare (income or consumption without the SPL transfer) is used to generate the indicators by quintile, except for the adequacy of benefits indicator; posttransfer welfare is used to generate the adequacy indicator.