Social Assistance in Developing Countries

Armando Barrientos

Aug 2013 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

The rapid spread of large-scale and innovative social transfers in the developing world has made a key contribution to the significant reduction in global poverty over the last decade. Explaining how flagship anti-poverty programmes emerged, this book provides the first comprehensive account of the global growth of social assistance transfers in developing countries. Armando Barrientos begins by focusing on the ethical and conceptual foundations of social assistance, and he discusses the justifications for assisting those in poverty. He provides a primer on poverty analysis, and introduces readers to the theory of optimal transfers. He then shifts the focus to practice, and introduces a classification of social assistance programmes to help readers understand the diversity in approaches and design in developing countries. The book concludes with an analysis of the financing and politics of the emerging institutions and of their potential to address global poverty.

Ratings and reviews

Barriento's book offers an up-to-date conceptualization of poverty and the response of development countries to social policy demands. The second part of the book entails the empirical evidence and provides rigorous examples on how states have shaped social assistance.

About the author

Armando Barrientos is Professor and Research Director at the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester. His research interests focus on the linkages between welfare programmes and labour markets in developing countries, and on policies addressing poverty, vulnerability and population ageing. His most recent books are Just Give Money to the Poor (2010, with J. Hanlon and D. Hulme), Demographics, Employment and Old Age Security: Emerging Trends and Challenges in South Asia (2010, edited with Moneer Alam) and Social Protection for the Poor and Poorest (2008, edited with D. Hulme).