In Nepal, the Old Age Allowance is an essential lifeline for the elderly, but a series of constraints in its design and implementation are limiting its effectiveness in practice. This briefing paper looks at what should be done to further improve the programme.
The key messages are:
- The Old Age Allowance is insufficient for fulfilling needs besides food, it would be beneficial to consider increasing the allowance from Rs 500.
- Given the challenges many elderly people face in simply. collecting their transfer, distributing the allowance through more localised ward-based offices would benefit recipients, as would home distributions by the Village Development Committee (VDC).
- Elderly people’s concerns around ethnicity and age eligibility barriers need to be considered by policy makers, especially as the Old Age Allowance is presented as a universally targeted scheme
