How Relevant Is Targeting to the Success of an Antipoverty Program?

Ravallion, Martin

dc.creator	Ravallion, Martin
dc.date	2012-03-30T07:12:34Z
dc.date	2012-03-30T07:12:34Z
dc.date	2009-09-30
dc.date.accessioned	2023-02-18T19:40:23Z
dc.date.available	2023-02-18T19:40:23Z
dc.identifier	World Bank Research Observer
dc.identifier	1564-6971
dc.identifier	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4429
dc.identifier.uri	http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/CUHPOERS/249914
dc.description	Policy-oriented discussions often assume that "better targeting" implies larger impacts on poverty or more cost-effective interventions for fighting poverty. The literature on the economics of targeting warns against that assumption, but evidence has been scarce and the lessons from the literature have often been ignored by practitioners. This paper shows that standard measures of targeting performance are uninformative or even deceptive about the impacts on poverty, and cost-effectiveness in reducing poverty, of a large cash transfer program in China. The results suggest that in program design and evaluation, it would be better to focus directly on the program's outcomes for poor people than to rely on prevailing measures of targeting.
dc.publisher	World Bank
dc.rights	CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO
dc.rights	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo/
dc.rights	World Bank
dc.subject	administrative costs, cash transfers, economic growth, household income, income, inequality, new poor, political economy, political economy of targeting, political support, poor, poverty gap index, poverty measures, poverty reduction, public spending, social security, squared poverty gap index, targeted transfers, targeting, targeting mechanisms
dc.title	How Relevant Is Targeting to the Success of an Antipoverty Program?
dc.type	Journal Article
dc.type	Journal Article
dc.coverage	East Asia and Pacific
dc.coverage	China