Romania : Strengthening Inclusion and Improving Effectiveness for Social Assistance Benefits
Despite the overall successful picture of sustained economic growth, a significant share of Romanians live in absolute poverty and deep pockets of poverty still remain, pointing to the need of more inclusive and effective social safety nets. During...
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| Format: | Policy Note |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/11/16797520/romania-strengthening-inclusion-improving-effectiveness-social-assistance-benefits http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18911 |
| Summary: | Despite the overall successful picture
of sustained economic growth, a significant share of
Romanians live in absolute poverty and deep pockets of
poverty still remain, pointing to the need of more inclusive
and effective social safety nets. During recent years
Romania made efforts to redistribute the benefits of growth
by keeping constant the share of GDP devoted to social
protection; still, the per capita expenditure on the main
social assistance benefits is amongst the lowest in EU.
Compared with the EU average, Romania has a good mix of
targeted/ non-targeted social assistance programs, but they
provide only a modest protection of the poor against income
vulnerability, and at a relatively high cost. Taken
together, the safety net benefits cover 71 percent of the
poor. Some key issues and challenges for Romania are: The
'leakages' of social assistance cash transfers has
increased, while performance in covering the poverty gap
weakened. Spending on poverty targeted programs has
decreased relative to GDP and so has the capability of these
benefits to adequately cover the basic needs of the poor.
The high number of programs and the heterogeneity of the
eligibility thresholds/criteria for different benefits
translate into a rather fragmented and difficult to monitor
system of social assistance benefits. The report describes
several policy options or recommendations, among them:
Strengthen social inclusion by increasing access of the poor
to social assistance benefits. Improve effectiveness by
further consolidation of the system and improved monitoring.
Strengthen the linkages between social assistance,
education, and labor policies. |
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