Summary

322 | Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance

using a PMT26 on an independent data collection and not over the prelist of households that were preidentified by humanitarian agencies operating in the Gao region. • Communities may bring legitimacy to the process in some places but not universally. In Indonesia, communities showed greater acceptance of

CBT than PMT. In contrast, in Niger, PMT was shown to have a slight preference due to past experiences of community bias in CBT. • Communities appeared to use definitions of poverty that were not strictly related to household consumption. In Indonesia, the definition appeared to be more related to earnings potential and similarly in

Cameroon. In Ghana, communities favored smaller households with fewer prime-aged, able-bodied persons, while the PMT favored larger poor families with two or more working adults. • In Niger, both CBT and PMT aligned equally (and moderately) well with self-perceptions of poverty. In Indonesia, CBT aligned better than PMT with self-perceptions of poverty.

Although PMT comes off slightly preferred in several of the experiments, in most cases, the differences in accuracy are relatively small. The differences are much smaller than the kinds of exclusion that result from program budgets that are much smaller than the population needs. Moreover, the results depend somewhat on which metric of welfare is used and on the criteria for judgment—targeting accuracy versus community acceptability.

Summary

The literature is not definitive on the choice of methods and moreover, the context always matters. Context includes more technical factors such as the goals of the program, the shape of poverty and inequality, the degree of formality, and administrative capacity. It also includes the less tangible institutional history and political economy. No single method dominates across contexts and evaluation criteria. Table 5.4 summarizes the main methods, when each is appropriate, the minimum conditions for using them, their pros and cons, and how useful they are during shocks. However, the appropriate mix of methods or selection for each country depends on specific historic and political factors, and thus decisions on targeting methods remain a source of discussion in social assistance policy.

The combination of contextual factors—administrative capacity, budget, and the strength or form of social contract—is also key. In countries with very low capacity, and especially those with low capacity, low inequality, and social tensions, developing household-specific targeting will be harder