Improving the Targeting of Social Programs in Ghana PDF Download

Author: Quentin Wodon
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821396064
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
This study provides a diagnostic of the benefit incidence and targeting performance of social programs in Ghana together with suggestions for how to improve targeting performance.

Author: Weltbank
Publisher:
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This study, a draft of which was shared with the Government of Ghana in November 2009, provides a basic diagnostic of the benefit incidence and targeting performance of a large number of social programs in Ghana. Both broad-based programs (such as spending for education and health, and subsidies for food, oil-related products, and electricity) as well as targeted programs (such as Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty, or LEAP, the indigent exemption under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), school lunches and uniforms, or fertilizer subsidies) are considered. In addition, the study provides tools and recommendations for better targeting of those programs in the future. The tools include new maps and data sets for geographic targeting according to poverty and food security, as well as ways to implement proxy means-testing. This executive summary provides a brief synthesis of the key findings and messages from the study.

Author:
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Category : Electronic book
Languages : en
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Author: Ghana. Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection
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Category : Human services
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Author:
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Category : National policy
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Author: Houssou, Nazaire
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Despite improvements to the implementation regime of Ghana’s fertilizer subsidy program, this paper shows that considerable challenges remain in ensuring that the subsidy is targeted to farmers who need fertilizer the most. Currently, larger-scale and wealthier farmers are the main beneficiaries of subsidized fertilizer even though the stated goal is to target smallholder farmers with fertilizer subsidies. The experience of other African countries suggests that the effectiveness of fertilizer subsidies can improve with effective targeting of resource-poor smallholders. However, targeting smallholder farmers entails significant transaction costs and may even be infeasible in some cases. Faced with such challenges, Ghanaian policy makers must ponder the question of how to improve the targeting of input subsidy programs in the country. Further research is needed to identify more cost-effective approaches for achieving the goal of targeting.

Author: Thomas Bowen
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464815755
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Adaptive social protection (ASP) helps to build the resilience of poor and vulnerable households to the impacts of large, covariate shocks, such as natural disasters, economic crises, pandemics, conflict, and forced displacement. Through the provision of transfers and services directly to these households, ASP supports their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to the shocks they face—before, during, and after these shocks occur. Over the long term, by supporting these three capacities, ASP can provide a pathway to a more resilient state for households that may otherwise lack the resources to move out of chronically vulnerable situations. Adaptive Social Protection: Building Resilience to Shocks outlines an organizing framework for the design and implementation of ASP, providing insights into the ways in which social protection systems can be made more capable of building household resilience. By way of its four building blocks—programs, information, finance, and institutional arrangements and partnerships—the framework highlights both the elements of existing social protection systems that are the cornerstones for building household resilience, as well as the additional investments that are central to enhancing their ability to generate these outcomes. In this report, the ASP framework and its building blocks have been elaborated primarily in relation to natural disasters and associated climate change. Nevertheless, many of the priorities identified within each building block are also pertinent to the design and implementation of ASP across other types of shocks, providing a foundation for a structured approach to the advancement of this rapidly evolving and complex agenda.

Author: Houssou, Nazaire
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
This paper assesses whether fertilizer subsidy programs can be better targeted to resource-poor farmers using the case of Ghana and proxy means test approaches. Past fertilizer subsidy programs in the country have not been particularly targeted to the poor, even as targeting poor and smallholder farmers has become key in the program implementation guidelines. As a result, many poor farmers have not benefited from past programs. Our results show that targeting approaches based on proxy means tests that use the correlates of poverty to select beneficiary farmers can potentially improve the poverty outreach and costeffectiveness of Ghana’s fertilizer subsidy programs. Therefore, we propose that the proxy means test approach should be considered for implementing Ghana’s fertilizer subsidy programs, first in a pilot project involving a few communities, and later, if found successful, in a full-scale program.

Author: Kathleen Beegle
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464811660
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Poverty remains a pervasive and complex phenomenon in Sub-Saharan Africa. Part of the agenda in recent years to tackle poverty in Africa has been the launching of social safety nets programs. All countries have now deployed safety net interventions as part of their core development programs. The number of programs has skyrocketed since the mid-2000s though many programs remain limited in size. This shift in social policy reflects the progressive evolution in the understanding of the role that social safety nets can play in the fight against poverty and vulnerability, and more generally in the human capital and growth agenda. Evidence on their impacts on equity, resilience, and opportunity is growing, and makes a foundational case for investments in safety nets as a major component of national development plans. For this potential to be realized, however, safety net programs need to be significantly scaled-up. Such scaling up will involve a series of technical considerations to identify the parameters, tools, and processes that can deliver maximum benefits to the poor and vulnerable. However, in addition to technical considerations, and at least as importantly, this report argues that a series of decisive shifts need to occur in three other critical spheres: political, institutional, and fiscal. First, the political processes that shape the extent and nature of social policy need to be recognized, by stimulating political appetite for safety nets, choosing politically smart parameters, and harnessing the political impacts of safety nets to promote their sustainability. Second, the anchoring of safety net programs in institutional arrangements †“ related to the overarching policy framework for safety nets, the functions of policy and coordination, as well as program management and implementation †“ is particularly important as programs expand and are increasingly implemented through national channels. And third, in most countries, the level and predictability of resources devoted to the sector needs to increase for safety nets to reach the desired scale, through increased efficiency, increased volumes and new sources of financing, and greater ability to effectively respond to shocks. This report highlights the implications which political, institutional, and fiscal aspects have for the choice and design of programs. Fundamentally, it argues that these considerations are critical to ensure the successful scaling-up of social safety nets in Africa, and that ignoring them could lead to technically-sound, but practically impossible, choices and designs.

Author: Weltbank
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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For most of the last two decades, Ghana's economy has been on a high growth path, which has been accompanied by significant reduction in poverty. Despite this progress, large macroeconomic imbalances threaten growth and continued poverty reduction. Rapid economic growth and poverty reduction has been accompanied by growing inequality in terms of income and geographical areas. The Government of Ghana (GoG) has a comprehensive national social protection strategy (NSPS) in place and is finalizing the national social protection policy. Given existing macroeconomic challenges, resources allocated to social protection programs should be used in the most cost-effective and pro-poor manner. This assessment aims to contribute to the rationalization of social protection public expenditures, building on recent work by the GoG. This report updates the analysis on core social assistance programs, active labor market programs, social insurance schemes including the national health insurance scheme, and general fuel and electricity subsidies. To establish a more effective and sustainable social protection system, the report recommends addressing the following four challenges: consolidating the substantial gains achieved to date and building a stronger program portfolio; strengthening expenditure management; expanding well-targeted programs and rationalizing poorly targeted programs; and ensuring the sustainability of key programs.