Progress or stagnation in the Arab region - what insights do the newly published figures on social protection offer?

Written by Anton Bjork

On 12 September 2024, the ILO published its World Social Protection Report (WSPR) 2024-2026. What does the report tell us about changes in the Arab countries? Focusing on the indicator "proportion of population covered by at least one social protection cash benefit", this blog post gives an overview of the regional situation. Upcoming blog posts will concentrate on more specific indicators.

Overall social protection coverage has increased

A comparison between the latest set of data (mostly for the years 2021 and 2022) with the data published in the previous World Social Protection Report (mostly for 2019 and 2020) as subsequently revised, [1] indicates a slight overall increase in social protection coverage in the Arab region, [2] as the proportion of the population covered by at least one social protection benefit (weighted average) increased from 28.2 per cent to 34.7 per cent over the last years (see Figure 1).[3]

This slight increase is partly owed to the inclusion of Algeria, a populous country with a high coverage rate (60.2 per cent), in the latest dataset. Focusing only on the countries for which data are available across the two periods, regional coverage increased by 3.9 percentage points to 32.1 per cent.

Between the two data series, coverage of at least one social protection benefit rose considerably in Morocco (from 20.5 per cent to 42.6 per cent), in Libya (from 46.2 per cent to 66.1 per cent), and in Bahrain (from 62.4 per cent to 86.4 per cent). Meanwhile, coverage decreased marginally in Saudi Arabia (from 64.2 per cent to 64 per cent) and in the State of Palestine (from 16.6 per cent to 16.5 per cent).

Despite the overall positive trend towards higher coverage, the Arab region still lags considerably behind the global average, which increased from 48.1 per cent to 52.4 per cent.

Social insurance stands for the biggest share of coverage

A breakdown of the weighted averages by type of coverage, limited to countries with available data, indicates that 13 per cent of the population in the Arab countries are covered by some form of non-contributory social protection (social assistance), while 21.8 are covered by some form of contributory social protection (social insurance). As a proportion of total social protection coverage, non-contributory mechanisms therefore play a slightly more important role in the Arab region than at the global level (see Figure 2).

Notably, coverage of non-contributory social protection is higher than coverage of contributory social protection only in a few Arab countries, namely Bahrain, Iraq, Palestine and Sudan. Bahrain is also noteworthy since it is the only country where there seems to be an overlap of non-contributory and contributory social protection, meaning that around 17 per cent of the population are covered by both.

No clear gender pattern

Coverage of at least one form of social protection disaggregated by gender is available only for a handful of countries, and no clear regional pattern emerges. In the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, coverage is significantly higher among women than among men, while in Egypt it is slightly higher among women. In Comoros, Mauritania, and Oman, on the other hand, male coverage exceeds female coverage (see Figure 3).

A comparison of the latest gender-disaggregated overall social protection coverage with data from 2020 or earlier can only be done for two countries, namely Egypt and Mauritania. In Egypt, female coverage increased significantly, from 29 to 38.1 per cent. This is possibly a result of the Takaful and Karama programme, which is in large part targeted to women and female-headed households. In Mauritania, coverage increased marginally among men and women alike.

Key takeaways:

• Overall social protection coverage in the Arab region has increased during the last few years, but continues to lag far behind the global average.
• Coverage of contributory social protection (social insurance) – though still low as compared to the global average – stands for the majority of total social protection coverage in the Arab region, while non-contributory social protection (social assistance) plays a lesser role.
• While data limitations make it difficult to distinguish any clear regional gender-related pattern in terms of overall social protection coverage, the significant increase of women’s coverage in Egypt is noticeable.

Footnotes:

[1] In case of discrepancies between data in the World Social Protection Report 2020-2022 and data available on ILOSTAT, the latter source has been used. For a few countries, no new data have been provided, meaning that the value is the same for both time series.

[2] It may be noted that the Arab region/countries, as defined by ESCWA, differs from the sub-region "Arab states" as defined by the ILO.

[3] As noted in the WSPR, comparability across years may be limited due to "changes in the methodology of data collection/reporting".