Consequences of Social Safety Nets Benefits and Causes for Not Included in the Targeted Programmes – a Multivariate Approach

Musammad Rahima Begum , Regional Coordinator, Democracy International
Dr. Md. Zakir Hossain, Professor, Dept of Statistics, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology
Musa Halima Begum, Assistant professor, Leading University
Md. Aminul Kaiser Kaiser, Lecturer, Deffodil International University

Social Safety Net Programme (SSNP) is a set of public measures with the intention to protect the people of the society suffers from various types of economic and social hardship. Safety net programs are the basis of the country’s social protection approach and are the mainstay of the poverty alleviation strategy. SSNPs have become the integral part of anti-poverty strategy to address risk and vulnerabilities of the poor in Bangladesh. This study intends to explore the consequence of SSNP benefits in terms of poverty reduction and identify the major dimensional factors for not being selected in the targeted SSNPs. The study used several statistical tools and techniques including factor analysis to achieve the research objectives. The study adopted mainly cluster sampling methods where PSU of BBS have been considered as clusters and covered 3322 households from 130 rural clusters. Several causes were identified for not being included in the targeted SSNPs. Among them improper selection, non-cooperation from public delegate of local government, nepotism, and no political exposure are the notable reasons. Over half of the respondents mentioned that they were excluded due to improper selection and non-cooperation from public delegate of local government. The factor analysis extracted six factors viz., poor capacity of implementing authority; lack of transparency; poor capacity; corruption; awareness of eligible non-beneficiaries; resource scarcity. The study recommends that the selection process of safety net beneficiary should to be fair and free from bias for optimum utilization of resources and ensuring maximum benefit for the poor.

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 Presented in Session P2. Poster Session Ageing, Health and Mortality