Decentralizing Eligibility for a Federal Antipoverty Program

• Tác giả: Martin Ravallion
• Ngôn ngữ: eng
• Ký hiệu phân loại: 362.57 Measures to prevent, protect against, limit effects of poverty
• Thông tin xuất bản: World Bank, 2012
• Bộ sưu tập: Tài liệu truy cập mở
• ID: 301837
• Chủ đề: 1. absolute poverty; 2. community groups; 3. fiscal constraints; 4. household survey; 5. impact on poverty

Tóm tắt

 In theory, the informational advantage of decentralizing the eligibility criteria for a federal antipoverty program could come at a large cost to the program's performance in reaching the poor nationally. Whether this happens in practice depends on the size of the local-income effect on the eligibility cutoffs. China's Di Bao program provides a case study. Poorer municipalities adopt systematically lower thresholds-roughly negating intercity differences in need for the program and generating considerable horizontal inequity, so that poor families in rich cities fare better. The income effect is not strong enough to undermine the program's overall poverty impact
  other factors, including incomplete coverage of those eligible, appear to matter more.