A Poor Means Test? Econometric Targeting in Africa

Caitlin Brown, Martin Ravallion and Dominique van de Walle

No 22919, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: 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.

JEL-codes: I32 I38 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-dev
Note: DEV
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Published as Caitlin Brown & Martin Ravallion & Dominique van de Walle, 2018. "A poor means test? Econometric targeting in Africa," Journal of Development Economics, .

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Journal Article: A poor means test? Econometric targeting in Africa (2018)
Working Paper: A poor means test ? econometric targeting in Africa (2016)
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