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Field
Abstract
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Before
Targeting beneficiaries for social programs in urban areas are increasingly important as urban populations grow and poverty or emergency relief programs become more common in densely populated settings. However, the current targeting strategies and tools may not be best suited for these dynamic urban environments. For example, the tools for targeting social programs often rely on methods developed in rural settings. These rural programs often leverage pre-existing social and political institutions to target beneficiaries. We theorize that the effectiveness of these structures may break down in shifting, urban environments. Another popular beneficiary targeting tool is the proxy means test. While proxy means tests are promoted as a quick option for assessing program eligibility, it requires regular updates to calibrate the means testing and does not translate well outside of welfare-based eligibility.
This study aims to provide evidence and recommendations for identifying beneficiary households/individuals for social programs in urban areas. In parallel to the traditional approach to targeting, we will use a decentralized targeting mechanism that aims to gather information held by socially knowledgeable members of an urban community. The principal social program that we will implement is a one-time unconditional cash transfer to households. For the cash transfer, we intend to verify whether or not this decentralized targeting of the unconditional cash transfer is effective in reaching poor households and households that have experienced an economic or health shock.
We set out to examine how a decentralized targeting method differs from beneficiary selection in a more traditional regime. To do so, we will implement a study that tests various alterations elicitation methods.
• Do certain members of an urban community have better access to information about households that are most likely to benefit from a social program?
• Are certain members of an urban community better positioned to share information about a social program?
• Depending on how they are selected, do beneficiaries of a cash transfer differ in their consumption and investment patterns?
We intend to contribute to evidence about targeting of diverse social programs through an experiment with residents of Monrovia, Liberia. We will solicit the advice of individual residents within the community to identify beneficiaries for two separate programs. We seek to provide evidence to verify whether leveraging social connections lead to differential beneficiary selection than other methods. The project will investigate how local, urban social networks can be resourced to reach households within a densely populated community with diverse social protection programs.
We propose a decentralized mechanism for reaching program beneficiaries. The decentralized targeting mechanism, if found effective, could be used more widely to apply local community knowledge and identify key social nodes to improve program beneficiary selection.
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After
Targeting beneficiaries for social programs in urban areas are increasingly important as urban populations grow and poverty or emergency relief programs become more common in densely populated settings. However, the current targeting strategies and tools may not be best suited for these dynamic urban environments. For example, the tools for targeting social programs often rely on methods developed in rural settings. These rural programs often leverage pre-existing social and political institutions to target beneficiaries. We theorize that the effectiveness of these structures may break down in shifting, urban environments. Another popular beneficiary targeting tool is the proxy means test. While proxy means tests are promoted as a quick option for assessing program eligibility, it requires regular updates to calibrate the means testing and does not translate well outside of welfare-based eligibility.
This study aims to provide evidence and recommendations for identifying beneficiary households/individuals for social programs in urban areas. In parallel to the traditional approach to targeting, we will use a decentralized targeting mechanism that aims to gather information held by socially knowledgeable members of an urban community. The principal social program that we will implement is a one-time unconditional cash transfer to households. For the cash transfer, we intend to verify whether or not this decentralized targeting of the unconditional cash transfer is effective in reaching poor households and households that have experienced an economic or health shock. We propose a decentralized mechanism for reaching program beneficiaries. The decentralized targeting mechanism, if found effective, could be used more widely to apply local community knowledge and identify key social nodes to improve program beneficiary selection.
We set out to examine how a decentralized targeting method differs from beneficiary selection in a more traditional regime. To do so, we conducted a study that tested multiple channels of identifying poor and vulnerable households in urban neighborhoods of Monrovia, Liberia.
The primary research questions we set out to address were:
• Do certain members of an urban community have better access to information about households that are most likely to benefit from a social program?
• Are certain members of an urban community better positioned to share information about a social program?
• Depending on how they are selected, do beneficiaries of a cash transfer differ in their consumption and investment patterns?
Through this study, we hope to contribute evidence about targeting of diverse social programs through an experiment with residents of Monrovia, Liberia. We will solicit the advice of individual residents within the community to identify beneficiaries for two separate programs. We sought to provide evidence to verify whether leveraging social connections lead to differential beneficiary selection than other methods. The project investigated how local, urban social networks can be resourced to reach households within a densely populated community with diverse social protection programs.
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