Efficiency, Legitimacy and Impacts of Targeting Methods : Evidence from an Experiment in Niger
The methods to select safety net beneficiaries are the subject of frequent policy debates. This paper presents the results from a randomized experiment analyzing how efficiency, legitimacy, and short-term program effectiveness vary across widely us...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/387791524060631076/Efficiency-legitimacy-and-impacts-of-targeting-methods-evidence-from-an-experiment-in-Niger http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29714 |
| Summary: | The methods to select safety net
beneficiaries are the subject of frequent policy debates.
This paper presents the results from a randomized experiment
analyzing how efficiency, legitimacy, and short-term program
effectiveness vary across widely used targeting methods. The
experiment was embedded in the roll-out of a national cash
transfer program in Niger. Eligible villages were randomly
assigned to have beneficiary households selected through
community-based targeting, a proxy-means test, or a formula
designed to identify the food-insecure. Proxy-means testing
is found to outperform other methods in identifying
households with lower consumption per capita. The methods
perform similarly against other welfare benchmarks.
Legitimacy is high across all methods, but local populations
have a slight preference for formula-based approaches.
Manipulation and information imperfections are found to
affect community-based targeting, although triangulation
across multiple selection committees mitigates the related
risks. Finally, short-term program impacts on food security
are largest among households selected by proxy-means
testing. Overall, the differences in performance across
targeting methods are small relative to the overall level of
exclusion stemming from limited funding for social programs. |
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