TY - BOOK ID - 133420244 TI - Social Transfers and Social Assistance : An Empirical Analysis Using Latvian Household Survey Data PY - 1999 PB - Washington, D.C., The World Bank, DB - UniCat KW - Cash Transfers KW - Finance and Financial Sector Development KW - Financial Literacy KW - Household Budget KW - Household Per Capita Income KW - Household Survey KW - Income KW - Income Distribution KW - Insurance KW - Poor KW - Poor Households KW - Poor Individuals KW - Poverty KW - Poverty Alleviation KW - Poverty Assessments KW - Poverty Impact Evaluation KW - Poverty Line KW - Poverty Reduction KW - Rural Development KW - Rural Poverty Reduction KW - Services and Transfers to Poor KW - Social Assistance KW - Targeting KW - Transfers KW - Transfers In Kind KW - Transition Economies KW - Unemployment UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:133420244 AB - April 2000 - In Latvia, only 1.5 percent of households receive social assistance, which for those households represents 20 percent of income. The allocation of social assistance is unequal. Urban households outside the capital (Riga) and those headed by male adults are systematically discriminated against. Because social assistance is locally financed, poor households in different parts of the country are treated unequally. Milanovic assesses the performance of Latvia's system of social transfers, in three ways: First, he analyzes the incidence (who receives transfers) of pensions, family allowances, unemployment benefits, and social assistance. Per capita analysis shows pensions tending to be pro-rich and families allowances pro-poor (a finding typical in poverty analyses). Introducing an equivalence scale alters the results and shows all individual cash transfers performing about the same: mildly pro-poor. Next, he examines the performance of social assistance, which is, by definition, directed to the poor. He shows that Latvia's current system is concentrated - meaning that social assistance is disbursed to few households (only 1.5 percent of all households receive it) but among those that do receive it, it represents a relatively high share (20 percent) of income. Households that are systematically discriminated against in the allocation of social assistance are urban households living outside the capital (Riga) and those headed by male adults. Third, he looks at the regional allocation of social assistance. The results confirm earlier findings of large horizontal inequalities - that people with the same income from different parts of the country are treated unequally, because the existing system is based on local financing of social assistance. This paper - a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group - is part of the Latvia Poverty Assistance Report (February 2000). The author may be contacted at bmilanovic@worldbank.org. ER -