By Matthew Greenslade
The World Bank’s long-term advocacy of poverty targeting social protection schemes has been punctuated by moments of relative enlightenment, where the costs of poverty targeting have been recognised. But its push for poverty-targeted benefits as the basis of the tax-financed side of national social protection systems has remained in place, suggesting a stark lack of internal lesson learning.
Darkness to enlightenment …
The World Bank is a longtime advocate of poverty targeting, where benefits on the tax-financed side of social protection systems are aimed at the poorest, which comes with major costs. Social protection here means social security, or the benefit system, not its wider interpretations that include social care and other functions of government. The World Bank’s advocacy of poverty targeting emerged in the era of structural adjustment and the Washington Consensus, or soon after. Over the last decade or so, it has included the promotion of social registries, large databases which can be used to select beneficiaries of multiple poverty-targeted schemes, not just one.
Poverty targeting as promoted by the World Bank is commonly done through proxy means testing, often in combination with other approaches such as community-based targeting. However, there are drawbacks to promoting poverty targeting as the basis of the tax-financed, as opposed to contributory, side of social protection systems. It is, to quote Daisy Sibun, a ‘residual approach to social protection’.[1] Support is ‘reserved only for the poor and needy who are unable to help themselves through the market’. In contrast, on the other side is ‘an institutional approach’. This is ‘preventative rather than curative, providing support for the population as a whole to give each person equal opportunity’. Moreover, proxy means testing comes with other costs, including high targeting errors, questions over whether it violates human rights, an increased risk of community tensions and the creation of a ‘missing middle’ between the extreme poor and the relatively wealthy in receipt of contributory benefits. Apparently rising above such concerns, the World Bank has praised proxy means testing as an approach which ‘can accurately and cost-effectively target the chronic poor’.[2]
But in 2022, the World Bank took a more reflective approach, acknowledging the significant costs of poverty targeting. In its 2022 book Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance: A New Look at Old Dilemmas, the World Bank told us that poverty targeting can be tricky.[3] ‘Income dynamics and shocks are significant and pose difficult challenges for eligibility determination processes … It is not possible to know perfectly who is poor or what their income is; errors will occur, often including substantial errors.’ We are also told, ‘There may be stigma or social discord as a result of making distinctions between people of different welfare levels.’ And, ‘the litany of criticisms from the human rights perspective of … proxy methods of selection can seem almost preclusive of their use.’
As a result, the World Bank said, there needs to be a weighing of the pros and cons of different approaches to tax-financed social protection. ‘Policy makers must decide whether, how broadly or narrowly, and how to target a program based on their appreciation of the magnitude of the benefits of concentrating resources where they are most needed versus the magnitude of the various errors and costs.’ We were even told, programmes using ‘demographic targeting’ (universal, lifecycle programmes) are ‘possibly pragmatic’.
… to darkness
However, this moment of apparent enlightenment has been superseded by the World Bank reverting to its old mindset of promoting poverty-targeted benefits as the basis of social protection systems. This is for the tax-financed side of systems, but it has big implications because the contributory side is often restricted by high and persistent labour market informality. First, in 2024, in reference to the 21st replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank said on social protection, ‘IDA21 will build countries’ capacity to accurately identify the poorest and most vulnerable and prioritise them for support.’[4] No evidence of considering the pros and cons there. Backing this up, in the State of Social Protection Report 2025, the World Bank tells us unambiguously, ‘Given the size of the needs and limited resources, low-income countries should focus on expanding non-contributory cash transfers … for the poor.’[5] It even brings middle-income countries into the prescription: ‘social assistance should be focused on those in the poorer quintiles, especially in LICs and MICs, where fiscal resources are limited and needs are high’. This is in the face of research from the ILO showing numerous middle-income countries – and some low-income countries – now have a higher income per capita than high-income countries when they began to establish their social security systems many years ago, often much higher.[6] And it is in the face of research from Development Pathways, which shows that 52 low- and middle-income countries – more than a third of the global total – have already implemented universal or near-universal schemes as part of wider social protection systems to address lifecycle risks for children, persons living with disabilities and older people.[7]
But it is surely stating the obvious that it is for governments, voters and voters’ representative organisations to decide whether to invest in wider coverage or universal schemes in developing more comprehensive social protection systems, not the World Bank. There will be costs from benefits going to a larger group of people in more inclusive and universal programmes. But there are major benefits too, which can include minimal exclusion of those who are eligible and high inclusion of the poor, and positive impacts on stability, the social contract and the public’s willingness to pay taxes and properly fund social protection programmes in the future, as Nepal appears to be demonstrating. The ‘magnitude of the benefits’, and the extent to which they outweigh costs, is for representative governments and their populations to judge. This is what has happened in high-income countries, which have typically built multi-tiered, lifecycle social protection systems using a combination of universal and means-tested programmes, in combination with social insurance.
Looking to countries for leadership, not the World Bank
What are we to conclude from the inconsistency of World Bank messages on social protection in recent years? That critical thinking and internal lesson learning within the World Bank is not functioning. There is clearly more enlightened thinking taking place in the World Bank, as the 2022 book on targeting demonstrated. But more enlightened messages are getting lost, and it appears that only those leaving the organisation feel free to properly speak out. Martin Ravallion, former head of research at the World Bank, declared after he had left the organisation that the advocacy of poverty targeting there had become a ‘fetish’.[8] At the same time, he pointed to the lack of internal learning in the World Bank, saying there needs to be ‘a quite fundamental change in the Bank’s culture such that managerial and staff incentives are reoriented from lending to learning’.
The World Bank ought to be consistent in its pronouncements or, better still, not pronounce at all. It would be far better for it to think, how do representative governments and voters, social partners and representative civil society organisations want to develop social protection systems that support the national population? And how can the World Bank support them? The World Bank will argue that governments sign up to programmes it supports. But they need the World Bank’s resources, so it is hardly a choice made on a level playing field. When given freedom of choice, countries commonly choose a mixture of poverty-targeted and universal schemes, in addition to contributory schemes, just as high-income countries do. In a world facing an increasing risk of global shocks, including climate-related events, falling official development aid commitments and high country debt, it is all the more pressing that the World Bank does not encourage countries down the wrong path. The World Bank must broaden its approach to tax-financed social protection; it must be more humble and seek to understand what governments and populations want; and it must learn lessons from its own research.
Part 2 of this blog, addressing social registries and the lessons from COVID-19, will be published soon.
To read more on why the World Bank does what it does and how governments are pushing back on social protection, see Matthew Greenslade’s book Beyond the World Bank: the Fight for Universal Social Protection in the Global South, published online – open access – in November 2025 and in hard copy in December 2025. Key messages from the book can be found here, and a recording of Matthew presenting them here.
Matthew Greenslade is an independent consultant on social protection and value for money in developing countries. He has worked across two decades on the design and implementation of social protection systems, on monitoring and evaluation, economic aspects of social protection (economic development, value for money, affordability, links to tax systems), facilitating knowledge management, capacity strengthening, and supporting system development on the ground, including in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Ghana.
[1] Sibun D. (2022). Can leopards change their spots? A critical analysis of the World Bank’s and ILO’s approach to universality. Development Pathways.
[2] Leite P. (2014). Effective Targeting for the Poor and Vulnerable. World Bank. Social Protection and Labour Technical Note. And del Ninno C. and Mills B. (2015). Safety Nets in Africa: Effective Mechanisms to Reach the Poor and Most Vulnerable. World Bank.
[3] Grosh M., Leite P., Wai-Poi M. and Tesliuc E., editors (2022). Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance: A New look at Old Dilemmas. World Bank.
[4] World Bank (2024). IDA21 Policy Package: The ‘Focus Areas’ Paper.
[5] World Bank (2025). State of Social Protection Report 2025: The 2-Billion Person Challenge.
[6] International Labour Organisation (2019). 100 years of social protection: The road to universal social protection systems and floors. Volume 1: 50 country cases.
[7] Sibun D. and Seglah H. (2024). Taking stock of progress: A compilation of universal social security schemes in low- and middle-income countries. Development Pathways.
[8] Ravallion M. (2016). The World Bank: Why It Is Still Needed and Why It Still Disappoints. Journal of Economic Perspectives.