Study title

The social assistance explorer contains a harmonised panel dataset of social assistance indicators spanning 2000-2015. It has been developed to support comparative research on emerging welfare institutions. Comparative analysis of social protection institutions in low and middle income countries is scarce. Yet social assistance accounts for most of the recent expansion of welfare institutions. The project collected data on programme design and objectives, institutionalisation, reach, and financial resources. Key indicators can be aggregated at country and region levels.Since the turn of the century low and middle income countries have introduced or expanded programmes providing direct transfers to families in poverty or extreme poverty as a means of strengthening their capacity to exit poverty. The rationale underpinning these programmes is that stabilising and enhancing family income through transfers in cash and in kind will enable programme participants to improve their nutrition, ensure investment in children's schooling and health, and help overcome economic and social exclusion. The expansion of antipoverty transfer programmes has accelerated. Estimates suggest that around 1 billion people in developing countries reside with someone in receipt of a transfer. As would be expected, the spread of social assistance has been slower and more tentative in low income countries due to implementation and finance constraints and limited elite political support. Antipoverty transfer programmes in developing countries show large variation in design, effectiveness, scale, and objectives. In most countries, there are several interventions running alongside one another with diverse priorities and designs, and often targeting different groups. In many countries social public assistance programmes work alongside social insurance programmes for formal sector workers and humanitarian or emergency assistance. Social assistance focuses on groups in poverty, provides medium term...