For example, by the year 2013 cash transfers are used in practically all developed, developing and emerging countries around the world and close to 1 billion people are covered by this type of protection.<sup>27</sup> School feeding programs, recently reviewed by the World Food Program and the World Bank, exist in 78 developing countries in the world and cover 270 million children.<sup>28</sup> Public works at scale exist in over 50 countries.

But how do these programs compare to the size of population? Data from household surveys assembled by the World Bank in the resource called ASPIRE give a sense of coverage across countries.<sup>29</sup> Based on responses from households in nationally representative surveys, one can estimate what percent of a population is covered by different forms of social protection programs by regions (Figure 1). We see that globally even though all developing countries seem to have some form of social protection, less than one half of the population benefits from it. Social protection of any sort reaches less than a quarter of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite South Asia’s longer history of locally owned safety net programs, just over one third of population (and slightly more- 40 percent of the poorest quintile as shown in Annex 3) is reached by any sort of social protection. Many countries have incomplete social protection systems with important instruments missing. But in some countries, such as Romania, Mongolia, Chile or Thailand, social protection covers close to 100 percent of their poorest and most of the population (see Annex 3).

# **FIGURE 1: PERCENT COVERED BY MAIN TYPES SOCIAL PROTECTION PROGRAMS BY REGIONS**

_(Percent of population receiving transfers from social protection program)_

> 27 Barrientos (2012). Discussing the choice of specific instruments and their relative role in each country is beyond the scope of this paper; see World Bank (2012b).

> 28 World Food Program school feeding global survey 2012.

> 29To look at the coverage by a whole set of social protection programs, their adequacy, and impacts on poverty and inequality, one needs household survey data that provides information on the poverty status of beneficiaries, as well as on the transfers from a variety of social protection programs.  We rely on the World Bank’s ASPIRE data set. It is based on household surveys that are relatively recent (after 2005), contain social protection questions or modules which allow the identification of beneficiaries of social programs, and are harmonized, and are available to the World Bank ( www.worldbank.org/spatlas).  Among all countries in the developing world as of 2013 only 56 meet these criteria. The data includes 17 countries in Low-Income Groups, 20 in Lower middle-income and 15 in upper middle income (classification is from WB Atlas). In terms of regional break down 7 counties are in SubSaharan Africa (AFR), 8 in East Asia & Pacific (EAP), 17 in Eastern and Central Europe (ECA), 16 in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), 3 in the Middle East and northern Africa (MNA), and 7 in South Asia (SAR).  The ASPIRE data set is expanding rapidly- this year 10 more countries will be added and another 15 are in the pipeline. See Annex 2 for list of countries and surveys used.

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