What Are the Challenges to Safety Nets

Despite the many arguments in favor of publicly provided safety nets, there are still some reservations in the development community about their feasibility and desirability. This section summarizes these concerns and briefly explains how various program design and implementation features can be used to help address these issues so that, on balance, good programs will be beneficial in most settings. 

The qualifiers in that sentence are important. Much safety net practice around the world over the last 20 years has not been particularly good, and what works in one setting may not succeed in another. Fortunately, a recent explosion of innovations in safety net programs makes for many highly promising options, and there are numerous successful programs from which future initiatives can learn. 

Managing the challenges is complex, often requiring actions on multiple dimensions of design and implementation. The following discussion offers only brief summaries of these issues, with more detailed information provided as indicated throughout the rest of the book. 

The premier reason safety nets are not a headline social policy on the development agenda is concern over whether countries—especially poor countries—can afford to transfer meaningful resources to their poor. This is a complex issue, which involves many nuances and trade-offs chapter 3 provides a comprehensive treatment of the financing of safety nets. 

For example, consider the extreme case of Ethiopia, where annual per capita income is about US 100 (World Bank 2004a). To provide adequate food for all the inhabitants whose consumption is below the food poverty line would require an annual expenditure of about US 810 million—12 percent of GDP, or about one-third of all public spending. This expenditure would obviously compete for resources against many other unmet needs, since only 52 percent of appropriately aged Ethiopian children are in primary school, infant mortality is 117 per 1,000 live births (one of the h hest rates in the world), and water supply coverage is only 24 percent (the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa). It would be difficult to say that safety nets should be funded, or fully funded, when the opportunity cost is primary education, primary health care, or water supply systems. 

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