Efficiency, Legitimacy and Impacts of Targeting Methods : Evidence from an Experiment in Niger

Premand, Patrick ; Schnitzer, Pascale

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: TARGETING;    CASH TRANSFERS;    SOCIAL PROGRAM;    SAFETY NETS;    POVERTY;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8412
RP-ID  :  WPS8412

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The methods to select safety netbeneficiaries are the subject of frequent policy debates.This paper presents the results from a randomized experimentanalyzing how efficiency, legitimacy, and short-term programeffectiveness vary across widely used targeting methods. Theexperiment was embedded in the roll-out of a national cashtransfer program in Niger. Eligible villages were randomlyassigned to have beneficiary households selected throughcommunity-based targeting, a proxy-means test, or a formuladesigned to identify the food-insecure. Proxy-means testingis found to outperform other methods in identifyinghouseholds with lower consumption per capita. The methodsperform similarly against other welfare benchmarks.Legitimacy is high across all methods, but local populationshave a slight preference for formula-based approaches.Manipulation and information imperfections are found toaffect community-based targeting, although triangulationacross multiple selection committees mitigates the relatedrisks. Finally, short-term program impacts on food securityare largest among households selected by proxy-meanstesting. Overall, the differences in performance acrosstargeting methods are small relative to the overall level ofexclusion stemming from limited funding for social programs.