Built for children. Carrying the elderly. Flowing to the cities. Morocco’s Direct Social Support programme is sheltering 1.7 million elderly people through benefits formally labelled for other purposes — while its geographic footprint tracks population density as much as poverty.
Morocco’s Direct Social Support programme (DSS) has become one of the country’s primary safety nets for the elderly, official data show, with 1.7 million older people now covered under benefits formally classified as child protection or flat-rate family allowances. The National Agency for Social Support (ANSA) acknowledged this dual function in figures released through end-2025, noting that the grants “also aim to protect against risks associated with old age”.
The disclosure adds a significant dimension to a programme the government has primarily framed around child welfare. Since its launch, the DSS has disbursed 51 billion dirhams to nearly four million families — 32.7 billion dirhams through child protection grants reaching 5.5 million children across 2.45 million households, and 18.2 billion dirhams through a flat-rate allowance covering 1.47 million households. Embedded within both streams, the agency said, are elderly members whose households qualify under existing criteria.
“These grants also aim to protect against risks associated with old age”. — National Agency for Social Support, official data, December 2025
The programme’s geographic footprint raises a separate question. The three regions claiming the largest share of beneficiaries — Marrakech-Safi at 16.1 percent, Fès-Meknès at 15.7 percent and Casablanca-Settat at 13.7 percent — are also Morocco’s most populous. National Agency for Social Support said the concentration reflects both demographic weight and elevated rates of multidimensional poverty, particularly in rural and peri-urban pockets. The agency described the distribution as “an interaction between demographic determinants and socioeconomic factors”.
The pattern shifts when benefits are broken down by type. The flat-rate allowance concentrates in the south — Souss-Massa leads at 42.5 percent, followed by Drâa-Tafilalet at 41.3 percent and Guelmim-Oued Noun at 39.8 percent, regions where poverty is deep but populations are smaller. Child protection payments flow in the opposite direction, clustering in the urban north and west: Casablanca-Settat at 68.9 percent, Marrakech-Safi at 65.4 percent and Tanger-Tétouan-Al Hoceïma at 64.6 percent.
Across both streams, 84 percent of all beneficiaries fall at or below the poverty line — rising to 93 percent among child protection households. The DSS acceptance rate climbed from 45.5 percent at launch in December 2023 to 91.9 percent by end-2025. Of those still rejected, 42 percent had joined a formal employment scheme with its own family benefits, and 19 percent had crossed the programme’s socioeconomic threshold.