Improving State Capacity to Target Extreme Poverty: An Evaluation of a Randomized Intervention in Bangladesh

This research project aims to contribute to the understanding of how the selection of beneficiaries of social transfers can be improved. While most of the existing impact evaluations have focused on monitoring, incentives and accountablility, they have largely ignored that local government representatives responsible for these services may simply lack the ability to respond to public demands. Our project intends to contribute to the understanding of the role of state capacity in improving the allocation and targeting performance of old-age allowances in Bangladesh. Our formative primary data collection documents that local representatives lack the knowledge and tools to target the benefits according to the guidelines by the national government. We therefore aim to evaluate a state-capacity-building intervention that addresses the existing capacity constraints in two ways: First, by training local representatives on the national government guidelines for the selection of new beneficiaries and second, by providing them with required data on individuals in the target group to enable them to follow the government guidelines. The impact evaluation will focus on assessing whether in treatment unions newly selected beneficiaries are on average more eligible than newly selected beneficiaries in control unions using baseline and endline data from local government representatives as well as endline data from newly selected beneficiaries. The evaluation design will allow us to assess the causal impact of this capacity building intervention and thereby has the potential to generate evidence that can help to make anti-poverty policies in Bangladesh more effective.