Chronic poor

History of severe, chronic, poorly controlled hypertension... 

Adequate. The safety net system overall covers the various groups in need of assistance—the chronic poor, the transient poor, those affected by reforms, and all the various subsets of these groups. Individual programs should provide full coverage and meaningfiil benefits to whichever subset of the population they are meant to assist. 

Safety nets are never the whole or suffioient answerto poverty reduction or risk management. They must operate within the existing policy context and be balanced with existing or planned safety nets, sooial insurance, and other social or poverty alleviation policies. No single presoription fits all oircumstances. The mix of support to the chronic poor, the transient poor, and vulnerable groups will be complex, and, until the safety net is adequate for all, the subject of difficult and controversial triage decisions. 

Social safety nets should be in place before a crisis occurs. Permanent, rather than ad hoc, social safety nets can more effectively protect the poor from the adverse effects of crises without compromising longer-term goals. During good economic times, social safety net instruments help to alleviate poverty among the chronically poor and those suffering from the effects of non-economic shocks (APEC 2001, p. 6). 

Chronic poor. Members of this group lack the assets (broadly defined) to earn sufficient income, even in good years. The Chronic Poverty Research Centre (2004) estimates that between 300 and 420 million people are chronically poor. This is a substantial subset of the 1 billion people—18 percent of the world s population— who live on less than US 1 per day (Chen and Ravallion 2007). ... 

Because transitory poverty can be as high as half of total poverty, most societies will feel the need for safety nets both to help households cope with shocks and to provide some sort of assistance for the chronically poor. These two groups overlap incompletely with those with specific vulnerabilities, making the triage process yet more complex. Transfer policy also is often motivated by a desire to compensate losers in the reform of other schemes that have affected patterns of income or welfare. The losers may not be poor, but transfers may be called upon to compensate them. 

Chronic poor or chronicaiiy exposed to high risks... 

Vulnerable groups or the chronically poor who face multiple barriers to moving out of poverty may best be served by repeated and continued support from a social worker. This does not preclude any of the approaches already described. It does require additional processes for information sharing and referral between social workers and the programs and services their clients are beneficiaries of and/or eligible for. While the use of social... 

They serve as a basic needs-based social assistance program for the chronically poor with children. 

Chronically poor working Emilies Those not expected to work children, the elderly, the disabled Those needing temporary assistance... 

Chronically poor people who cannot afford to buy the food they need to improve their nutritional status... 

Chronically poor and transient poor families both working and not working... 

Chronically poor unemployed at the margins of the labor market... 

Chronically poor and vulnerable poor families with low level of human capital, especially children and mothers... 

Policy makers and sector specialists cannot choose an appropriate mix of safety net policies without first obtaining a good understanding of the population groups that need safety net programs on a permanent basis the chronically poor or a subset of these, the transient poor or a subset of these, and other vulnerable groups. 

Does the program mix provide an adequate balance of efforts to assist the chronically poor, transient poor, and special groups that may need aid even if overall poverty is low ... 

Safety net systems in middle-income countries may aspire to cover all target groups and motivations for safety nets, although they tend to focus on helping the chronically poor. Individual programs may be quite sophisticated, but innovations may not have spread to all programs in the country that might benefit from them. 

Complete safety nets cover the chronic poor, those hit hy shocks, and those with special vulnerabilities. Few middle-income countries have achieved full coverage in all three areas in general, the programs for the chronic poor are the best developed. 

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