Social policy in the MENA region

In Chapter 14 Mahmood Messkoub considers MENA’s social policy track record and challenges. He points out that, despite a long history of social programmes in the region, these have mostly covered formal sector employees including those in the civil service. Large numbers of informal sector workers, rural residents and agricultural workers, however, have had to rely on poor publicly provided services or have fallen back on meagre family resources and charitable handouts of the non-state providers in an informal security regime. All in all, the various social policy programmes of health, education, old-age pension and social protection fall below the needs and aspirations of their respective populations. State expenditure on social policy programmes are constrained by expenditure on generalised indirect subsidies, inter alia, to fuel, public utilities, water and staple food and the higher income groups in general benefit most from these indirect subsidies. This has led to debates increasingly focusing on the need for social policy reform and reduction of indirect subsidies, and on moving away from a universal rights-based approach to social provisioning and towards targeting poverty and improving social protection.