Social Assistance in Developing Countries

The rapid spread of large-scale and innovative social transfers in the developing world has made a key contribution to the significant reduction in global poverty over the last decade. Explaining how flagship anti-poverty programmes emerged, this book provides the first comprehensive account of the global growth of social assistance transfers in developing countries. Armando Barrientos begins by focusing on the ethical and conceptual foundations of social assistance, and he discusses the justifications for assisting those in poverty. He provides a primer on poverty analysis, and introduces readers to the theory of optimal transfers. He then shifts the focus to practice, and introduces a classification of social assistance programmes to help readers understand the diversity in approaches and design in developing countries. The book concludes with an analysis of the financing and politics of the emerging institutions and of their potential to address global poverty.

Part I. Introduction: 1. The emergence of social assistance in developing countries; Part II. Foundations: 2. Ethical foundations; 3. Poverty concepts and measures for social assistance; 4. Optimal anti-poverty transfers; Part III. Practice: 5. Anti-poverty transfers in practice; 6. Incidence, implementation and impact; 7. Budgets, finance and politics; Part IV. Conclusion: 8. The future of social assistance in developing countries.

Armando Barrientos is Professor and Research Director at the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester. His research interests focus on the linkages between welfare programmes and labour markets in developing countries, and on policies addressing poverty, vulnerability and population ageing. His most recent books are Just Give Money to the Poor (2010, with J. Hanlon and D. Hulme), Demographics, Employment and Old Age Security: Emerging Trends and Challenges in South Asia (2010, edited with Moneer Alam) and Social Protection for the Poor and Poorest (2008, edited with D. Hulme).