Percentage of people covered by social protection and labor programs in the total population

The percentage of the population in the poorest quintile covered by social protection and labor programs (SPL). The indicator is estimated by dividing the number of SPL beneficiaries in the poorest quintile by the number of the population in the poorest quintile, multiplied by 100. It includes direct and indirect beneficiaries (all members of the household where at least one member receives an SPL program. The poorest quintile is generated using pretransfer per capita welfare (income or consumption); the pre-transfer welfare is generated by subtracting 50 percent of social insurance and labor market transfers and 100 percent of social assistance transfers. SPL includes social assistance programs (conditional and unconditional cash transfers, social pensions, public works programs, fee waivers and targeted subsidies, school feeding program, in-kind transfers, and other social assistance), social insurance (contributory pensions and other social insurance), and labor market programs (passive and active measures). The indicator is generated by country and then aggregated at the regional and income group levels.

The source of the indicator is the Atlas of Social Protection: Indicators of Resilience and Equity (ASPIRE). ASPIRE is the World Bank's premier compilation of indicators to analyze the scope and performance of social protection programs. Developed by the Social Protection and Jobs (SPJ) Global Practice, ASPIRE provides indicators for 129 countries on social assistance, social insurance and labor market programs based on both program-level administrative data and national household survey data. ASPIRE is an ongoing project that aims to improve SPL data quality, comparability, and availability to better inform SPL policies and programs. ASPIRE also produces SPL coverage indicators for the total population and for different population groups (pre- and post-transfer income/consumption quintiles, urban and rural populations, and poor and non-poor defined by the relative and international poverty lines). These indicators are used for each SPL program captured in the survey, and for 12 standardized SPL program categories and three SPL areas.

The social protection (SP) coverage indicator has the following features:
- It is generated using official nationally representative household surveys.
- Its target population is World Bank client countries.
- Actual country coverage is 101 countries out of 144 World Bank client countries.
- For a country data point, it uses the most recent survey year within a 10-year time window (2013-2022).
- The indicators do not rely on imputation for missing values, nor inter- or extrapolation.
- It provides the best information available despite caveats.