Targeting the Poor: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia
American Economic Review
vol. 102,
no. 4, June 2012
(pp. 1206-40)
Abstract
This paper reports an experiment in 640 Indonesian villages on three approaches to target the poor: proxy means tests (PMT), where assets are used to predict consumption; community targeting, where villagers rank everyone from richest to poorest; and a hybrid. Defining poverty based on PPP$2 per capita consumption, community targeting and the hybrid perform somewhat worse in identifying the poor than PMT, though not by enough to significantly affect poverty outcomes for a typical program. Elite capture does not explain these results. Instead, communities appear to apply a different concept of poverty. Consistent with this finding, community targeting results in higher satisfaction. (JEL C93, I32, I38, O12, O15, O18, R23)Citation
Alatas, Vivi, Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna, Benjamin A. Olken, and Julia Tobias. 2012. "Targeting the Poor: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia." American Economic Review, 102 (4): 1206-40. DOI: 10.1257/aer.102.4.1206Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C93 Field Experiments
- I32 Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
- I38 Welfare and Poverty: Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
- O12 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
- O15 Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
- O18 Economic Development: Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
- R23 Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics