{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.012928248222365869, 'fraction_numerical': 0.006464124111182934, 'mean_word_length': 5.730434782608696, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
How much do social protections matter to poverty and inequality? An insight from Asian experiences

This article examines Asia’s experiences with social protection policies and their efficacy in addressing poverty and inequality. While the relatively high efficacy of the comprehensive welfare states of high-income countries has been widely documented, the experience of low- and middle-income countries may vary given the limited redistributive capacity of their social transfer. Data on 33 Asian countries covering 1990–2012 suggest that the limited and evolving composition and coverage of social protection policies vary significantly across countries and regions. Various panel data regressions estimated here yield significant roles of social protection policies in reducing inequality and especially poverty and extreme poverty even after controlling for the roles of gross domestic product (GDP) and other political economy, regional, and population characteristics. This analysis finds that the efficacy of evolving social protection policies from Asian countries does not vary significantly from those of more established welfare states. Whereas the aggregate level data on public social transfer expenditures are far from perfect and do not detail the qualitative variations in policy design and implementation, findings from this analysis help fill the void in literature to understand the degree to which low- and middle-income countries may count on social protection policies to address persistent poverty and growing inequalities.