At the same time, beneficiaries are more likely to access health and education services (Devereux et al., The number of direct support beneficiaries of has fluctuated between 1.0 million and 1.3 million over this period and accounted for 13.9% of total RPSNP beneficiaries in 2016/17, down from 22.7% in 2014/15. The number of public works beneficiaries rose from 4.0 million in 2004/05 to 6.0 million in 2005/06, fell to 4.0 million in 2014/15 and rebounded to 6.9 million in 2015/16.