Tracking Global Social Protection Responses to Inflation - Living paper v. 4

Between September and December 2022, the number of social protection and other related measuresannounced or implemented in response to inflation rose by about 67%. The latest tally includes 1,016 responses across170 economies. Overall, subsidies claim 34% of such measures and take four main forms (fuel, food, fertilizers, andvarious fee subsidies). Social assistance accounts for 29% of responses, 78% of which is provided in the form of cashtransfers. Tax and trade-related measures represent 21% and 6% of global responses, respectively. Active labor marketpolicies and social insurance claim a share of 5% each. Based on coverage data from 93 countries, social protectionprograms cover or are planning to cover 1.05 billion people (or about 13.5% of the world’s population). Similarly, basedon expenditure data from 382 programs across 125 economies, a total of $710.6 billion is being invested in socialprotection responses. This involves an average country spending of 0.74% of its GDP. The average size of bothsocial assistance and subsidy transfers represents about a quarter of the daily median income, while their averageduration is 4.7 months. Over half of social assistance transfers are new (53%) and are provided on a one-off basis( 51%).