How Relevant Is Targeting to the Success of an Antipoverty Program?
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 li...
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okr-10986-44292021-04-23T14:02:17Z How Relevant Is Targeting to the Success of an Antipoverty Program? Ravallion, Martin 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 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. 2012-03-30T07:12:34Z 2012-03-30T07:12:34Z 2009-09-30 Journal Article World Bank Research Observer 1564-6971 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4429 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo/ World Bank World Bank Journal Article East Asia and Pacific China |
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Digital Repository |
institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
institution |
Digital Repositories |
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World Bank Open Knowledge Repository |
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World Bank |
topic |
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 |
spellingShingle |
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 Ravallion, Martin How Relevant Is Targeting to the Success of an Antipoverty Program? |
geographic_facet |
East Asia and Pacific China |
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. |
format |
Journal Article |
author |
Ravallion, Martin |
author_facet |
Ravallion, Martin |
author_sort |
Ravallion, Martin |
title |
How Relevant Is Targeting to the Success of an Antipoverty Program? |
title_short |
How Relevant Is Targeting to the Success of an Antipoverty Program? |
title_full |
How Relevant Is Targeting to the Success of an Antipoverty Program? |
title_fullStr |
How Relevant Is Targeting to the Success of an Antipoverty Program? |
title_full_unstemmed |
How Relevant Is Targeting to the Success of an Antipoverty Program? |
title_sort |
how relevant is targeting to the success of an antipoverty program? |
publisher |
World Bank |
publishDate |
2012 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4429 |
_version_ |
1764391321261309952 |