The effects of social assistance on poverty: Turkey case

SUMMARY In this study, the effect of social assistance on poverty in Turkey were analyzed. To this end, Survey Income and Living Conditions Survey (SILC) micro data is used which is published by Turkey Statistical Institute (TSI). The impact of social assistance on poverty has been researched separately for 2006 and 2016 years. Relative poverty measure was used as the measure of poverty. This measure is calculated by taking 40%, 50% and 60% of the median income of the household. In this study, 50% of the median income was taken as the poverty line. The households below this limit were considered poor. Between the years 2006-2016 is based on these criteria, the number of poor tends to decrease who belows the poverty line in Turkey. Pre-2012 in Turkey, social welfare spendings by the state through the execution of the different institutions and legal arrangements; In 2012, the Ministry of Family and Social Policy (ASPB) was established and all institutions and legal arrangements came under a single roof. After the Ministry established, a considerable increase in social welfare expenditures has occurred. Social assistance expenditures, which amounted to 11 billion TL in 2012, by the year 2016 reached 32 billion TL. The main aim of the thesis on the effect of social assistance expenditure likely to be poor showing in Turkey increased in recent years were examined. In this direction, less than 50% of the median income of the income is used for the probability of being poor . The sum of social assistance based on household and individual households is defined as total social welfare income by adjusting according to the equivalence measure. The probabilty of bein poor was estimated using the total welfare incomes that defined the likelihood of being impoverished, the average age of the household, the gender of the household head, the age, marital status, and the status of being registered to the social security institution. Because of having binary structure of depending variable the Logit model is applied . When the marginal effects of the model are examined, the increase in the average of the education year has the effect of reducing the probability of being poor. Households are more likely to be poor whose household heads are female. However, the marital status of the head of household does not have a statistically significant effect on the probability of being poor. There is a negative relationship between the age of the household head and the probability of being poor. As expected, household heads who works informally are likely to be poor than formally works. The total amount of social assistance received by the household in the direction of our final target has the effect of reducing the probability of being poor. The increase in the amount of social assistance received by every 1000 TL decreases the probability of poor households by about 8%.