By, Stephen Kidd
Bloomsbury have just launched a new book by Matthew Greenslade, called “Beyond the World Bank: the Fight for Universal Social Protection in the Global South.” As the name suggests, it’s a strident critique of the World Bank’s approach to social security across low- and middle-income countries. It shows how, despite the World Bank’s apparent commitment to universal social protection – as attested by its membership of USP2030 – it has consistently promoted a neoliberal, regressive form of social security, using its considerable power to ensure that countries conform to its will.
I agreed to collaborate with Matthew in writing his book as I believe it is a story that needs to be heard. Over recent decades, the World Bank’s engagement on social security has stymied global efforts at poverty reduction, while undermining human rights and trust in the state and setting back economic growth. In some cases, the damage has been considerable: as we have shown, the World Bank’s promotion of the proxy means test as a targeting methodology for a cash transfer in Syria was one of the triggers for the civil war, resulting in the country’s total collapse.
The World Bank’s approach to social security has focused on promoting social assistance for the ‘poor’ – which they call Social Safety Nets – as the basis of national social security systems. When high-income countries adopted this approach in the 18th and 19th Centuries, it was known as poor relief. At its heart, the World Bank’s poor relief approach views social security as a charity, while the programmes themselves are commonly regarded as ‘handouts’. Intellectually, the World Bank fully embraced poor relief in its 1990 World Development Report, as a core component of the Washington Consensus. By targeting social security at the poor, spending on social security could be minimised, and taxes, in particular on the rich, could be kept low. The World Bank’s approach has changed very little in the past 35 years: while the broader Washington Consensus has been discredited, it is alive and well within the World Bank’s promotion of 19th-century poor relief.
Yet, the World Bank’s poor relief approach fails even on its own terms, given that, in most cases, the majority of intended beneficiaries are usually excluded from Social Safety Nets. Sometimes, selection using the proxy means test is a little better than random. The World Bank knows this, but it hasn’t stopped them from making the false claim – which has fooled many governments and supporters of social protection – that the proxy means test can “accurately and cost-effectively target the chronic poor” (del Ninno and Mills 2015).¹ Let’s not forget that the proxy means test was first developed under the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile: indeed, given this history, why would anyone expect the proxy means test – and its companion, the Anti-Social Registry – to be any more than a poor quality rationing mechanism.
Social Safety Nets are often combined with conditionalities that sanction recipients by removing benefits if they do not comply, often punishing the most vulnerable families. The World Bank are particularly attracted by workfare which, in recent years, they have blessed with the title ‘Productive Safety Nets.’ Yet, the World Bank themselves have explained how the concept of Productive Safety Nets is derived from the humiliating workhouses of 19th-century England. Nonetheless, they continue to promote workfare across the globe despite evidence – often produced by the World Bank itself – that it can make participating families poorer. And, as we have also explained, it is not uncommon for women to be sent to labour on workfare schemes while the male head of the household – who remains at home – receives the pay, a fundamental breach of women’s human rights.
Evaluations of World Bank poor relief have, unsurprisingly, shown that giving small amounts of cash to families living in poverty can positively impact family wellbeing (although it can encourage recipients to remain poor, so that they can continue to receive the benefit). Yet, as mentioned above, we forget that most families living in poverty miss out on the benefits of poor relief, due to the World Bank’s obsession with poverty targeting (and the proxy means test in particular). We can call these people the ‘exclusion errors’ but this disguises the true extent of the tragedy experienced by hundreds of millions of families as a result of poverty targeting: ‘exclusion error’ children have experienced hunger and poor nutrition which has limited their cognitive and physical development; many have engaged in child labour to help their families financially; they often miss out on a good education which sets back their life chances; and, ‘exclusion error’ families frequently experience the increased stress caused by living in poverty which can explode into domestic violence, harming both parents and children.
Trust in the state and a strong social contract should be regarded as a precious resource and fundamental to the success of any country. Yet, the World Bank’s promotion of poor relief has helped undermine national social contracts while reinforcing distrust in the state (with Syria being one of the most egregious examples). The implementation of poor relief means that most taxpayers pay for these arbitrary handouts to the poor from which they themselves are excluded, alienating both poor and rich alike. Why should people pay taxes if they are denied the benefits of their taxes being returned to them through effective redistribution in the form of high-quality public services, including universal social security? While distrust in the State is not just down to countries implementing poor relief, by insisting that countries should only offer benefits to the poorest – while excluding the majority of the poorest – the World Bank has exacerbated the problem. As a result, government revenues in most low- and middle-income countries remain too low for countries to finance the public services that would enable their citizens to enjoy the quality of life that they deserve.
In fact, if a government had the intention of undermining trust in the state, it need look no further than the proxy means test and anti-social registries as a tried and tested tool for accomplishing this very aim.
In contrast to the World Bank’s advice – and, as we have explained elsewhere – global evidence indicates that one of the best ways of building trust in the State is through the provision of universal social security. If you don’t believe me, why not listen to Sweden’s Ministry of Finance (2017), which, with over 70 years of experience in building trust, stated:²
“Another important explanation for the widespread public trust in the welfare systems and for why they are perceived as legitimate is that they have been mainly universal and covered everyone, rather than being needs-based (selective) and covering only those with the greatest need. It is easier to build a universal welfare policy on simple and clear-cut rules. This creates legitimacy and reduces distrust in politics and the system. The universal policy also means that commonly shared welfare benefits everyone. Experience has shown that citizens are more willing to accept financial responsibility for various initiatives when they understand how the initiatives will benefit them.”
While the World Bank often claim that they are not against universal social security, as Matthew points out in his book, this is undermined by their history of attacking governments that have implemented universal schemes. In Kenya, in 2019, the World Bank employed incorrect data to falsely claim that the country’s universal old age pension was mainly benefiting the so-called rich (see here). The government of Nepal spent many years defending its universal old age pension from the World Bank while, as we highlighted a few years ago (see here and here), the World Bank – along with its ally the IMF – has had a particular distaste for Mongolia’s universal child benefit, even threatening to withdraw loans if the government refused to means test the scheme. Despite the fact that the Government of Mongolia has consistently restored the universality of the Child Money programme after they have been forced to introduce means testing, the World Bank has not stopped its promotion of poor relief. For example, in its most recent public expenditure review, the World Bank (2025) recommends that Mongolia introduce poverty targeting into the Child Money programme, making the false claim that the proxy means test “more accurately identifies the most vulnerable households” than universal provision.³ The reality is that the universal Child Money programme has an exclusion error of around 1 per cent while the only programme using the proxy means test in Mongolia – the Food Stamp Programme – has an exclusion error of 80 per cent!
The power of the World Bank has created an environment of fear among social security specialists and international agencies, many of which are funded by the World Bank. Matthew told me that no staff in the UN were willing to go on record in his book with their criticisms of the World Bank. Further, it’s a common experience for consultants to be told by our UN or bilateral donor clients to hide the results of analysis showing the proxy means test in a poor light, apparently prioritising keeping governments ignorant about the poor performance of their schemes over riling the World Bank. Even World Bank staff who know they are promoting the wrong policies – and there are some – remain silent, presumably not wanting to put their jobs at risk.
Matthew’s book has done a great job in documenting, in meticulous detail, the role of the World Bank in promoting regressive poor relief globally. It’s a policy that has brought, by omission, immense harm to many people and, due to its unpopularity, has discouraged countries from investing in progressive, comprehensive social security systems that respect the right of everyone to access social security. As I wrote recently, if, over the past 20 years, countries had rejected the policy advice from the World Bank and, instead, gradually built affordable, universal social security systems, the lives of billions of people – including the most vulnerable – could have been transformed. I highly recommend Matthew’s very readable book, which is available from Bloomsbury and Amazon in hard copy and, thanks to a generous donation from ACT Church of Sweden, is free to download. But, more importantly, join us – and many others – in pushing back against the World Bank’s damaging domination of the global social security agenda and, instead, support countries to build comprehensive, universal social security systems that can transform the lives of their citizens.
¹ Del Ninno, C. and Mills, B. (2015). Safety Nets in Africa: Effective Mechanisms to Reach
the Poor and Most Vulnerable. Africa Development Forum, World Bank: Washington
D.C., USA.
² Sweden Ministry of Finance (2017). The Swedish Model. Information Material from the Ministry of Finance. Retrieved from: https://www.government.se/information-material/2017/06/the-swedish-model/
³ World Bank (2025). Mongolia public finance review: Making this time different — Fiscal reforms for stable, sustainable, and inclusive development. World Bank. Retrieved from: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099073125084572684/pdf/P179947-6244daa0-7abf-4bbf-b5a7-b9a0fcb33312.pdf