Social welfare is a system that provides assistance to needy individuals and families. The types and amount of welfare available to individuals and families vary depending on the country, state or region. Social welfare systems assistance to individuals and families through programs such as health care, food stamps, unemployment compensation, housing assistance and child care assistance. The benefits available to an individual vary by state. Eligibility is determined based on factors surrounding the person’s financial status and how it relates to the minimum acceptable levels within a particular state. The factors involved can include the size of the family unit, current income levels or an assessed disability.
Within each state, social welfare systems may go by different names, but they often serve similar functions. This can cause confusion when attempting to compare one state’s program to another. Additionally, the requirements to qualify also vary, depending on the poverty line in a particular state. This allows for adjustments based on items such as cost of living that are not standardized across the country.
South Sudan is characterized by ongoing conflict, worsening welfare indicators and low capacity. Even before the current conflict, over half the population (50.6 percent) lived below the national poverty line in 2008, while food insecurity routinely affected nearly 2 million people. The country displays some of the lowest human development indicators in the world, and infrastructure remains grossly underdeveloped.3 Formal institutions are being built from a very low base and the capacity of the Government to formulate policy and implement programs is limited, but growing, albeit at quite a slow pace.
Given the repeated shocks that affect South Sudan and the chronic vulnerability of the population, social protection programs can play a key role in improving resilience. Social safety nets (SSNs), are non-contributory transfer programs targeted to the poor. These programs usually include school feeding, cash transfers (conditional and unconditional), social pensions, public works, in-kind transfers (e.g., food stamps) and other social assistance programs (e.g., housing allowances, scholarships, fees waivers, etc.).
Poverty in South Sudan increased considerably due to recent shocks. Before the conflict, 50 percent of South Sudan’s population was below the poverty line, with a poverty depth of about 23 percent. Both the eruption of the conflict in late 2013 and the significant oil price decline of 2014-15 widened the poverty gap by 8 percentage points and deepened it to 34 percent. An additional 1 million people were added to the poverty pool in little more than 15 months, mainly due to loss of harvest and displacement in rural areas resulting from the conflict, raising market prices in the urban areas due to a rapidly depreciating SSP and inflation spikes.
Spending on SSNs in South Sudan has been largely financed by donors, with heavy focus on food distribution. There are currently no state-sponsored SSN programs. In 2012, food transfer programs accounted for approximately 98 percent of total SSNs expenditures and covered 70 percent of SSN beneficiaries, a proportion that has likely increased since the recent outbreak of hostilities. School feeding represented an additional 14 percent of beneficiaries. Cash for work and food for work interventions provided assistance to 15 percent of beneficiaries, and unconditional cash transfers addressed a 0.3 percent of total beneficiaries.
The Government’s vision on social protection is outlined in the South Sudan Development Plan and the National Social Protection Policy Framework. But the Government capacity to deliver on social protection objectives remains limited. This includes a lack of infrastructure and inadequate administrative capacity at the central and local levels. Programs are fragmented and do not exist at a significant scale or as longer-term interventions. There is no viable strategic planning in place, no robust mechanisms ensuring adequacy of benefits, and no clear budgeting procedures.
South Sudan can implement well-targeted SSNs to reduce its chronic dependence on humanitarian aid and alleviate reliance on patronage networks. The country is heavily dependent on humanitarian aid, which is crucial to save lives.6 However, many young adults who were born into war have become dependent on such aid, opting to rely heavily on patronage networks (and extended families) while waiting for unrealistic high paying ‘government jobs’. Given this context, different modalities of SSNs could contribute to alter this status quo and allow South Sudanese to escape the low-level equilibrium trap.
Moving to productive safety nets in rural areas can reduce humanitarian aid dependency and boost productivity. In South Sudan, the majority of the population lives in rural areas. Evidence from the Productive Safety Nets Program in Ethiopia shows it is possible to achieve the twin objectives of food security and increased farm productivity with well-designed programs. Transfers can be used to increase land productivity arising from investments in land, as well as improve local ecology from investments in common resources, and improve access to markets from investments in local roads.
Similarly, programs can be put in place aiming at creating and upgrading skills in urban areas. This can be achieved through cash transfers combined with vocational and life and business skills training. Only about 17 percent of urban adults in the age bracket 25-44 have benefited from vocational training, despite the fact that access to these programs more than doubles participation in the labor force. Given that the educational background of the young urban male population is better than the average, innovative solutions to upgrade skills can be very useful, particularly as a bridge between basic education and marketable skills.
The debate is shifting towards provision of SSNs to deliver the long-awaited peace dividends to the population. Yet, there are significant challenges: the war has displaced nearly 2 million people, making the identification of beneficiary difficult. Most SSN programs continue to be fragmented, lacking coherence and without the benefit of rigorous impact evaluations. But some stakeholders are beginning to realize that SSNs could be a way to deliver to the population the peace dividends that never materialized since independence. The debate is consequently shifting towards ‘costing’, targeting and the impact of SSNs on poverty
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