Social transfer programmes provided by Jordanian institutions

The government of Jordan has established numerous social protection schemes but many of them target the urban middle-class rather than the poor.

Public spending on social protection and health is high compared to other low- and middle-income countries. In 2012, it accounted for 12 per cent of GDP (Loewe & Jawad, 2018, p. 10). However, the bulk of spending was on health systems for public sector employees and on public pension schemes which covered only 60 per cent of the population. In addition, the membership conditions and benefit levels are different for three groups of people: (i) members of the armed forces; (ii) civil servants; and (iii) private sector employees. Informal sector employees in particular are completely excluded, although they comprise the poorest parts of society (Loewe et al., 2001; Loewe, 2019).

At the same time, less than 10 per cent of all public social protection spending in Jordan (that is, less than 1 per cent of GDP) relates to social transfer programmes, including unconditional social assistance, CfW, fee waiver and in-kind programmes – even though they are particularly important for low-income earners. In fact, all of them together cover 85 per cent of the bottom income quintile of the population although this is mainly due to the health treatment fee waivers that the Royal Court gives on request to households in difficult socio-economic situations. Cash transfers alone reach out to only about 20 per cent of the bottom income quintile while the benefits are too low to close the poverty gap (Loewe, 2019).

Another problem is the lack of cooperation and coordination between the different schemes. This results in partial overlaps of provisions and non-harmonisation of targeting rules. Considerable financial means are lost because of these deficiencies and heavy administrative burdens in general (Loewe et al., 2001).

Social transfers are provided by three different institutions:

• The National Aid Fund (NAF) administers several social assistance programmes although these only target Jordanian citizens. It is supervised by the Ministry of Social Development with the objective of providing support to poor and vulnerable groups of the population.

The main activity of the NAF is the provision of monthly cash transfers to people in need. The transfers are in the range of JOD 40-180 (EUR 50-223) per household, depending on its size and composition. For the selection of beneficiaries, the NAF combines a proxy-means-test with socio-categorical targeting (Zureiqat & Abu Shama, 2015). In theory, only households with an income below the national abject poverty line of JOD 336 per individual and year (Department of Statistics Jordan, 2016) are eligible to receive the benefit (ILO, 2019) – and only if there is no male of working age (15-64 years) without a work-disability in the household (Röth, Nimeh, & Hagen-Zanker, 2017; Loewe et al. 2001, p. 30). Any income received by one of the family members decreases the benefit received by 25 per cent (ILO, 2019). In addition, the NAF considers income-producing property, arable land, or possession of a car (unless used by a disabled member of the family) to be disqualifying factors. In practice, however, with few exceptions, only persons without any income qualify for the programme (ILO, 2019).

In the aftermath of the Syrian crisis, the NAF’s budget increased by JOD 3 million annually so that it can now support an additional 20,000 Jordanian families. In 2013, the Ministry of Social Development made an estimate that it would need another EUR 9.96 million to meet the needs of the growing numbers of vulnerable Jordanians in the context of the influx of Syrians. According to the NAF, the fund sought to increase the number of households benefitting from its regular assistance from 75,000 (in 2015) to 98,000 (in 2019) and the number of people receiving emergency assistance from 5,000 (in 2017) to 7,000 (in 2019) (Röth et al., 2017; “Majority of NAF beneficiaries”, 2018).

• The National Zakat Fund (NZF) operates a different social transfer scheme on behalf of the Ministry of Awqāf (religious endowments), Islamic Affairs and Holy Places. The scheme provides cash assistance to orphans and very poor households who do not receive social assistance from the NAF (Loewe et al., 2001). In 2015, the NZF extended one-time emergency assistance to more than 30,000 families along with regular

assistance to 43,000 orphans and 30,000 poor families, mostly through its 210 local zakāt (Islamic religious tax) committees. However, the benefits were very low, ranging from JOD 15 to 30 per household and person (Mechado, Bilo, & Helmy, 2018). In contrast to the NAF, non-Jordanians are theoretically eligible for support if they are very poor. In practice, however, the only known case of the NZF ever having provided support to Syrians was a one-time transfer of JOD 200,000 in 2014 to the Za‘atarī Camp, which was meant to finance food support for Syrian refugee families (Zureiqat & Abu Shama, 2015, p. 32).

• In 2015, the Ministry of Social Development started to open community centres serving “as a shelter for men, women and children who are victims of human trafficking, covering their basic needs and providing counselling and rehabilitation services” (Hassan, 2015). The Ministry also provides legal counselling services in cooperation with civil society organisations.

Three other institutions provide social services in parallel:

• The Jordan Hashemite Fund for Human Development (JOHUD) works through a network of 50 community development centres, mainly in rural areas. It is a foundation and considers itself an NGO. Nonetheless, it has been established by the state authorities and gets its core funding from the central government budget. That is why it makes sense to list it next to state institutions carrying out similar activities. These include awareness campaigns, vocational training and skills development, child and family health care, the promotion of productive activities of women, and micro-enterprise development as well as education and cultural programmes.

JOHUD addresses women in particular (Loewe et al., 2001, pp. 38-39).

• The Ministry of Education is responsible for Jordan’s public primary and secondary education system. It is free of charge for all Jordanians, and, in 2012, the Government of Jordan extended the free access to Syrian refugees with the financial support of the international donor community (Hagen-Zanker et al., 2018). However, in most schools, Syrian children are in separate classes and their lessons take place in the afternoon, when the Jordanian children have already left their classrooms. Of course, this is partly due to the fact that the schools cannot accommodate all Syrian and Jordanian children in a single shift.

• The Ministry of Health runs Jordan’s public health system. It does not provide free health care but the user fees are highly subsidised, covering presumably just about 10 per cent of actual costs. Very poor Jordanians can apply for a “green card” issued by the Royal Court, which entitles them to health care totally free of charge (Loewe et al., 2001). Since recently, Syrian refugees can get similar waivers (although these exempt parts of secondary and tertiary health care) provided that they are have registered with the Ministry of the Interior (MoI) in order to get a magnetic “MoI service card” or “security card” (biṭāqa amniyya) (Hagen-Zanker et al., 2018). Until the end of 2019, the Jordanian health system dealt with about 328,000 medical consultations of refugees under this programme (UNHCR, 2019).

Both Jordan’s public education and its public health system are chronically overstrained and of low quality, so even many lower-income families pay for private schools and private health care instead.

4.2 Social transfer programmes of foreign donors for