A Poor Means Test? Econometric Targeting in Africa / Caitlin Brown, Martin Ravallion, Dominique van de Walle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brown, Caitlin.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ravallion, Martin.

van de Walle, Dominique.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w22919.

NBER working paper series no. w22919

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2016.

Summary:

Proxy-means testing is a popular method of poverty targeting with imperfect information. In a now widely-used version, a regression for log consumption calibrates a proxy-means test score based on chosen covariates, which is then implemented for targeting out-of-sample. In this paper, the performance of various proxy-means testing methods is assessed using data for nine African countries. Standard proxy-means testing helps filter out the nonpoor, but excludes many poor people, thus diminishing the impact on poverty. Some methodological changes perform better, with a poverty-quantile method dominating in most cases. Even so, either a basic-income scheme or transfers using a simple demographic scorecard are found to do as well, or almost as well, in reducing poverty. However, even with a budget sufficient to eliminate poverty with full information, none of these targeting methods brings the poverty rate below about three-quarters of its initial value. The prevailing methods are particularly deficient in reaching the poorest.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2016.