Community based targeting mechanisms for social safety nets

Jonathan Kevane Conning

75 citations0/0 files storedRePEc: Research Papers in Economics

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Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare Income, Poverty, and Inequality Public Administration in Developing Nations

Abstract

This paper interprets case studies and theory on community involvement in beneficiary selection and benefit delivery for social safety nets. Several considerations should be carefully balanced in assessing the advantages of using community groups as targeting agents. First, benefits from utilizing local information and social capital may be eroded by costly rentseeking. Second, the potential improvement in targeting criteria from incorporating local notions of deprivation must be tempered by the possibility of program capture by local elites, and by the possibility that local preferences are not pro-poor. Third, performance may be undermined by unforeseen strategic targeting by local communities in response to national funding and evaluation criteria, or by declines in political support. Keywords: poverty alleviation; targeting; safety net; political economy; community; welfare. ** Williams College, Department of Economics, Williamstown, MA and Institute for Economic Development, Boston University. jconning@williams.edu; Santa Clara University, Department of Economics, Santa Clara, CA 95053. mkevane@scu.edu (corresponding author). We would like to extend our thanks to Harold Alderman, Pranab Bardhan, John Blomquist, Henry Bruton, Michael Cernea, Nora Dudwick, John Giles, Margaret Grosh, William Jack, Emmanuela Galasso, Eric Hanson, Simon Harrigan, Daniel Klein, Alexandre Marc, Jessica Mott, Akbar Noman, Albert Park, Tamara Perkins, Ashok Rai, Vivajendra Rao, Gustav Ranis, Martin Ravallion, Mary E. Schmidt, Endre Stiansen, William Sundstrom and participants at a World Bank workshop for providing input, suggestions and material. Nishant Nayyer provided able research assistance.

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