The dynamics of poverty targeting

Michael Hillebrecht, Stefan Klonner and Noraogo A. Pacere

Journal of Development Economics, 2023, vol. 161, issue C

Abstract: Several recent papers have compared the ability of proxy-means testing (PMT) and community-based targeting (CBT) to identify consumption-poor households. Motivated by the facts that targeted benefits typically reach beneficiaries with a substantial time lag and that transitions into and out of poverty are frequent, we assess PMT’s and CBT’s performance during the years following the targeting exercise. With original data from Burkina Faso, we replicate the finding that PMT outperforms CBT at baseline. But this pattern disappears for households’ poverty status 12 and 30 months later where both methods perform equally well. For real-world welfare programs where benefits typically accrue with a substantial time lag, our results suggest that CBT’s targeting performance is better than commonly thought.

Keywords: Poverty targeting; Targeting performance; Proxy-means test; Community-based targeting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I38 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveco:v:161:y:2023:i:c:s0304387822001754

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.103033

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