Kosovo Social Protection and Health Expenditure Note
Kosovo is one of the poorest countries in Europe, and a growing proportion of the population is at risk for social exclusion and long-term poverty. Overall spending on social protection has increased significantly over recent years, largely because...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/190411561720305500/Kosovo-Social-Protection-and-Health-Expenditure-Note http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32094 |
| Summary: | Kosovo is one of the poorest countries
in Europe, and a growing proportion of the population is at
risk for social exclusion and long-term poverty. Overall
spending on social protection has increased significantly
over recent years, largely because of increases in pensions
and war related benefits resulting in increased fiscal
pressure. Pensions are a mechanism to substitute income due
to a permanent loss of income generating capacity, such as
old age or disability and should not be used as a
compensatory measure for other reasons. For this reason, in
the early 2000s and faced with the impossibility of using
contributory pension records to pay pensions, a universal
basic pension was introduced in Kosovo.To contain the
expansion of pension spending going forward, the government
must refrain from introducing new benefits, disallow
increasing benefit levels for all but the basic pensions,
and pro-rate existing benefits above basic pension levels
contingent on funding availability. The expansion of
programs targeted at specific population groups have crowded
out spending of the social assistance targeted to the poor,
which is both low and declining. Increasing programs'
coverage and benefit levels and prioritizing the most
disadvantaged are key for increasing the effectiveness and
equity of social assistance. Public investments in
employment promotion and active labor market programs are
limited and insufficient to meet Kosovo's labor market
challenges. Given that low levels of health spending,
including on drugs, is a leading cause of poverty, the
social health insurance reform should not only work to
improve health outcomes but also to improve financial risk
protection, especially for the poor. |
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