The Use of Common Area k-Sample Test in Evaluating Targeting Methodologies: An Application to the Case of Egypt

Sahar El-Sheneity () and May Gadallah ()
Additional contact information
Sahar El-Sheneity: Cairo University
May Gadallah: Cairo University

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2017, vol. 133, issue 3, No 18, 1193-1206

Abstract: Abstract This research utilizes a measure for evaluating targeting methodologies that is based on the common area under the kernel densities of per capita expenditure of different poverty groups. The proposed measure is incorporated with misclassification errors. It also compares some variables commonly used in targeting from a multidimensional perspective to show their overlap where standard statistical tests show them as significantly different. Such an integrated approach helps identify the complexity of model building thus providing a new tool in guiding social policies focusing on poverty alleviation. To demonstrate the added-value of the suggested measure, it is applied to a case study involving different methodologies to target poorest households in regions characterized with high prevalence of poverty in rural Upper Egypt. Results show that trials to classify the surveyed households using different models are faced with large overlap according to the proposed measure even when errors of under-coverage and/or leakage drop. Models built on the national-level of poor areas or on regional-level do not perform well on the level of these poor villages where geographical targeting would have been optimal.

Keywords: Targeting; Under-coverage; Leakage; Proxy Means Testing; Kernel densities; k-Sample test (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-016-1405-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:133:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-016-1405-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-016-1405-3

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().