Algeria’s social welfare system has played a key role in alleviating the social consequences of the structural adjustment program. However, despite considerable financial measures introduced over the last decades, the population at large and the elderly in particular still receive inadequate coverage. This calls into question the effectiveness of Algeria’s social welfare policy. In this article, we shall attempt to assess its effectiveness through the study of the coverage level of the older population and of the pensioners’ standard of living. For the elderly, the level of social coverage has created inequalities among those who are entitled to social welfare and those who are not. But this is not all – there is further inequality among pensioners receiving coverage due to the considerable differences in the amounts they receive. Using a sample of 349,681 pensioners born between 1945 and 1950, these discrepancies have been analysed using the Lorenz curve and certain dispersion measures. Findings demonstrate that the Algerian pension system provides limited coverage to the population, resulting in a low standard of living for pensioners – this is what undermines its efficiency.