Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
among the nonbeneficiary households with women of child-bearing age, 92.1
percent in the first quartile (poorest) and more than 70 percent in the second-
poorest quartile are eligible to participate in the program, but are left out of it.
Thus, the key message from these analyses is that there is room for improving
targeting, and one of the policy actions that can help achieve that objective is
changing the beneficiary selection criteria.
The problem of mis-targeting is not unique to VGD—it is even more
severe in some of the other SSN programs. Before it was converted to a cash-
based program, about 35 percent of the beneficiaries in Food for Education pro-
gram belonged to the richest two quintiles (Ahmed 2000). In the Primary Edu-
cation Stipend Program—the successor of Food for Education—about 37 percent
of program beneficiaries belonged to the richest two quintiles (Ahmed 2004).
In contrast, the Food for Asset (FFA) component of the Integrated Food Secu-
rity program demonstrates a highly pro-poor targeting. Of all FFA-beneficiary
households, 71 percent belong to the poorest two expenditure quintiles (poor-
est 40 percent of all households in the income distribution). About 70 percent
of FFA beneficiaries are women. FFA requires both male and female benefici-
aries to participate in physical work that mainly involves earth moving. Only
out of desperation would a Bangladeshi rural woman be willing to work with
men at onerous, low-paying manual labor. As a result, the program is strongly
self-targeted.
However, except for the programs that require physical labor, self-target-
ing instruments are hard to find; therefore, administrative targeting mechanisms
are most commonly used to identify the needy. How can administrative target-
ing be improved? One option would be to use a proxy means test as an alterna-
tive to official selection criteria for measuring household welfare. This approach
relies on indicators that are highly correlated with household income, yet are
easy to collect, observe, and verify. Points can be assigned to the selected indi-
cators and eligibility assigned on the basis of the score, as a proxy for means or
income. A comparative study of 30 targeted social programs in Latin America
reveals that, among all targeting mechanisms, the proxy means test used in
Chile resulted in the highest targeting rate to the poor (Grosh 1994).
To further reduce leakages in the targeted delivery programs, a recent
World Bank (2002) study suggests options for reform. These include: emulat-
ing the design features of other programs with lower system losses (for exam-
ple, cash-based programs); piloting new initiatives (for example, smart cards);
and strengthening monitoring systems along with increasing public access to
information.
Conclusions
This review and analysis of the performance of the PFDS lends itself to several
conclusions. The reform measures leading to the dismantling of the rationing
