Although there has been “consensus that … broad-based economic growth is a necessary
condition for alleviating poverty”, it has also been widely recognised that growth, in
itself, is not a sufficient condition (Coady, 2004; p.1). A system of effective social safety
nets (SSNs) is also important in alleviating poverty. SSNs are those programmes that
have the primary objective of reducing poverty directly, and in many developing countries,
they are the only hope for reducing chronic poverty, malnutrition and diseases.
While they have taken a variety of forms in developing countries, SSNs may be broadly
classified into three categories: food subsidies, public works programmes, and targeted
human capital subsidies.