Finding the Poor vs. Measuring their Poverty : Exploring the Drivers of Targeting Effectiveness in Indonesia

Bah, Adama ; Bazzi, Samuel ; Sumarto, Sudarno ; Tobias, Julia

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: TARGETING;    PROXY-MEANS TESTING;    SOCIAL PROTECTION;    POVERTY;    POVERTY MEASUREMENT;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8342
RP-ID  :  WPS8342

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Centralized targeting registries areincreasingly used to allocate social assistance benefits indeveloping countries. There are two key design issues thatmatter for targeting accuracy: (i) which households tosurvey for inclusion in the registry and (ii) how to ranksurveyed households. The authors attempt to identify theirrelative importance by evaluating Indonesia's UnifiedDatabase for Social Protection Programs (UDB), among thelargest targeting registries in the world, used to providesocial assistance to over 25 million households. Linkingadministrative data with an independent household survey,they find that the UDB system is more progressive thanprevious, program-specific targeting approaches. However,simulating an alternative targeting system based onenumerating all households, they find a one-third reductionin undercoverage of the poor compared to focusing onhouseholds registered in the UDB. Overall, there are largegains in targeting performance from improving the initialregistration stage relative to the ranking stage.