Most countries of the Western Balkans are gradually shifting from first to second generation
social safety net (SSN) reforms. As countries of the Western Balkans are moving up the income
tree, there is a need and political will to finalize the first generation SSN reforms (such as reducing
benefit fragmentation, improving targeting and coverage, and establishing unified registries) and to
move toward a second generation of SSN reforms. The second-generation reforms entail creation of
“smart” safety net programs that inter alia focus on decreasing dependency on welfare among those
who are able to work and promoting their employability with a combination of incentive-based cash
transfers and services. In other words, this process could be described as moving beyond “how to
get the right people into safety net programs” and toward “how to ‘activate’ and help beneficiaries
graduate from poverty and eventually dependence on transfers.” In this context, activation is a
combination of policy tools that supports and incentivizes job searching and job finding as a way to
increase productive participation in society and self-sufficiency.