The Impact of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) Program on Multidimensional Poverty of Refugees in Turkey

Monday, May 3rd, 2021
10:00 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
via Zoom

In 2019, the World Food Programme in Turkey designed a multidimensional poverty index (MPI) based on data collected in wave 3 of its Comprehensive Vulnerability Monitoring Exercise (CVME), the CVME MPI. The purpose of the CVME MPI was to support programme targeting, to monitor programme outcomes, and to provide evidence-based recommendations for Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) programmatic adjustments. As part of the meta-analysis of the ESSN programme in Turkey, this talk provides a short review of the multidimensional measure used for the vulnerability analysis and its relationship with the ESSN programme’s targeting approach, and analyses the potential adjustments needed to create a refugee-specific MPI, a so-called Refugee MPI. The talk will further explore how the programme has affected refugees’ lives in areas like employment, fertility decisions, social cohesion, economy at macro and micro level by comparing beneficiaries, non-beneficiaries and host society. The ESSN’s hypothetical impact on non-applicants is also assessed and the study provides results on how multidimensional poverty among refugees would have been if refugees, who did not apply to the ESSN, had applied to receive the assistance.

 

This event was co-hosted by the University of Oxford.

Meet the Presenter:

Nils Grede assumed the position of World Food Programme Representative (WFP) for Turkey in September 2017. Before arriving to Turkey, he was the Representative in El Salvador. Prior to his current position, Mr. Grede gained experience as WFP Deputy Director in Jakarta, Indonesia (2013-2014). He temporarily served as WFP Interim Deputy Director in Brazzaville, Congo (2013) and WFP Interim Country Director in Mbabane, Swaziland (2012-2013). Before that he was Deputy Chief of Nutrition and HIV/AIDS Policy at WFP’s Headquarters. Prior to joining WFP, he was Director of International Recruitment Marketing at Boston Consulting Group (2008 and 2009) and Principal Director at Boston Consulting Group in Los Angeles, California (2001-2005). Mr. Grede is a German national and is fluent in eight languages: German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew. He is quickly working on improving his Turkish. He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Islamic and Middle Eastern Sciences received from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Grede has also received an MBA from Stanford University.

Meet the Discussant: 

Felix Schmieding is a Senior Statistician with the World Bank – UNHCR Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement. Earlier work includes assignments with UNHCR, UNDP, and the UN Statistics Division. Felix has implemented or provided technical assistance to numerous statistical activities in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean – including living conditions surveys, labour force surveys, population censuses, and administrative registers. He has worked closely with the National Statistical Offices and National Statistical Systems of various countries, building technical and institutional capacity. He has also held key roles in global processes aiming at the development of international statistical standards under the auspices of the UN Statistical Commission. Felix has advised on the analysis of multi-dimensional poverty on various occasions, including for the 2012 population census in Rwanda and a 2018 survey of refugees in Kenya. He holds an M.Sc degree from the University of Oxford.

 

About the Event Series

The Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at George Washington University and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), with the support of the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report office (UNDP HDRO), are pleased to host a special seminar series on the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI). Goal 1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to end poverty in all its forms and dimensions. The global MPI 2020 offers a tool to make progress towards this goal.

Produced in partnership with the UNDP HDRO, the global MPI 2020 compares acute multidimensional poverty for 107 countries in developing regions and provides a detailed image of who is poor and how they are poor. It offers both a global headline and a fine-grained analysis covering 1,279 sub-national regions, and important disaggregation such as children, and people living in urban or rural areas, together with the indicator deprivations of each group. Bringing together the academic and policy spheres, this series of seminars will highlight topics such as sensitivity analyses, overlapping deprivations, changes over time (poverty trends), and inequality using the global data. The sessions will also include work that applies the global MPI methodology, the Alkire Foster method, to innovative measures.

The seminars are taking place online on Mondays at 10 a.m. EST. They will be hosted by IIEP Co-Director Professor James Foster and are open to everyone focused on improving the lived experience of those who are deprived.