The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Social transfer programs in developing countries are designed to contribute to poverty reduction by increasing the income of the poor in order to ensure minimal living standards. In addition, social transfers provide a safety net for the vulnerable, who are typically not covered by contributory social security. The question of how effective such programs are in achieving these aims has been the subject of numerous impact evaluations. However, the optimal design of such programs is still unclear. Even less is known about whether the adoption and implementation of transfer programs is really driven by poverty and neediness or whether other factors also have an influence. To investigate these and other research questions, we have developed a new dataset entitled Non-Contributory Social Transfer Programs (NSTP) in Developing Countries. One advantage of this dataset is that it traces 186 non-contributory programs from 101 countries back in time and presents them in panel form for the period up until 2015. The second advantage is that it contains all the details regarding the various programs’ designs as well as information on costs and coverage in a coded format and thus facilitates both comparative quantitative and in-depth qualitative analyses. While describing the data we discuss a number of examples of how the dataset can be used to explore different issues related to social policies in developing countries. We present suggestive evidence that the adoption of social transfer programs is not based only on pro-poor motives, but rather that social policy choices differ between political regimes.

This paper investigates the link between inequality and demand for redistribution by looking at how individuals form their perceptions of inequality. Most of the literature analyzing demand for redistribution has focused on objective inequality, rather than subjective perceptions of inequality. However, a model that links demand for redistribution to subjective inequality is needed, given that recent empirical research has shown a growing gap between subjective and objective inequality. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme survey, the paper focuses on explaining individuals' formation of inequality perceptions using objective variables. The paper then studies the relationship between these perceptions and individuals' demand for redistribution. The analysis finds that objective macro variables are associated with individuals' perceptions of inequality, and that individual circumstances, some of which relate to self-interest, like age, educational attainment, and income, also play an important role. Perceptions of equality, in turn, are significatively correlated to demand for redistribution and seem to substitute for any effect of objective variables. This result suggests that contextual macro variables only affect individuals' demand for redistribution through their perceptions of equality and do not have a direct effect.

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