Social Protection for Poverty Reduction in Times of Crisis

Youssouf Kiendrebeogo, Abdoulaye Tall and Kossi Assimaidou

No 201311, Working Papers from CERDI

Abstract: The recent global crisis has highlighted the need to protect the poor and people vulnerable to adverse shocks. Many countries have implemented various programmes to protect social spending and help poor people during periods of financial crisis. This paper uses the most comprehensive database on social spending compiled thus far, and the unique cross-country database on poverty to explore the poverty-reducing role of social protection during financial crises. Using advanced panel data techniques to deal with endogeneity issues, we find that financial crises are associated with slower reductions in the poverty headcount and the poverty gap. Crises lead to 526,400-555,000 additional poor people and to an increase of 4.7-10.6 percentage points in the poverty gap in the medium to long term. These devastating effects of crises on poverty are relatively lower—by 11 and 20 percentage points for each percentage point increase in social spending for the poverty headcount and the poverty gap, respectively—in countries with higher social spending, suggesting the importance of social protection for poverty reduction in times of crisis and potential gains from policy intervention.

Keywords: Poverty; Social Spending (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 I32 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2013/2013.11.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2013/2013.11.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2013/2013.11.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Social protection for poverty reduction in times of crisis (2017)
Working Paper: Social Protection for Poverty Reduction in Times of Crisis (2013)
Working Paper: Social Protection for Poverty Reduction in Times of Crisis (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdi:wpaper:1447

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from CERDI Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vincent Mazenod ().