Targeting Social Protection: How to Reach Those in Need

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Targeting Social Protection: How to Reach Those in Need

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Use the following timestamps to navigate through the different sections of the video.

00:00 Welcome and opening remarks
04:46 Main findings of the report Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance
18:10 Advantages and disadvantages of different targeting methods
22:36 Implementation and monitoring: The case of Senegal
29:58 Social registries: The case of Colombia
36:52 The role of technology, big data, and machine learning
44:12 Senegal: Including groups persistently displaced
50:52 Colombia: Including vulnerable groups
56:16 Targeting costs: moderate or manageable?
1:02:24 Legislation in Senegal mandating the use of social registries
1:08:34 The case of Colombia in dynamizing social registries
1:16:01 Closing remarks

  • Targeted social protection interventions can play a valuable role in helping achieve and deliver Universal Social Protection. Targeted programs and universal programs together support broader social policy.
  • Targeting is an effective tool used in social protection to make the most of constrained fiscal space. For a given budget, prioritizing poorer households can produce more progress on reducing poverty and inequality, smoothing income, and other dimensions of welfare such as human capital.
  • There is no single targeting method that fits every situation. Context and policy objectives drive choices. Whether to use methods such as self-targeting, geographic targeting, demographic targeting, or household welfare-based targeting methods must be based on context and capacities.
  • Regardless of the targeting method, robust social protection delivery systems can help: reduce transactions costs or stigma for beneficiaries, minimize inclusion errors, facilitate crisis response, improve access to social assistance, especially for the poorest and most vulnerable populations such as indigenous, migrants, people living with disability and others.
  • Advances in technology—ICT, big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning—offer the promise of significant improvements in targeting accuracy but are not a panacea. Better data may matter more than greater sophistication in data use. Social protection targeting methods are changing as new data and technology as well as other innovations emerge.

Poll Results

Read the chat
Jing Guo

Hello everyone, please send your questions through the live chat on this page and join the conversation by using the hashtag #TargetedProtection on social media. You can read more about our new report Revisiting Targeting in Social Assistance: A New Look at Old Dilemmas here: press release, publication page, and two page summary. You will be able to download the report very soon. Apologies for the delay and technical glitch. 
Thu, 03/31/2022 - 09:08
BK

For the various listed targeting methods, what is the average targeting and operation cost in relation to total beneficiary amounts that goes to the poor, especially for a small target group. in relation to universal social protection.
Thu, 03/31/2022 - 09:11
Jing Guo

Regardless of the targeting method, robust social protection delivery systems are pivotal to the success and impact of social protection programs. Laura Pabón Alvarado shares how Colombia is making a move from periodic survey sweeps to a more dynamic system.
Thu, 03/31/2022 - 09:13
Chad Anderson

In various country contexts I have lived and worked in, the vast majority of the population is poor, or at risk of falling into poverty. In Somalia for example, about 90% of the population is poor, or at high risk of falling into poverty with any given shock. As you also noted earlier, poverty is dynamic, and there is no one fixed group that are "the poor". Indeed poverty is a moving target, and mounting evidence shows how PMT produces high targeting errors. As such, in contexts where the vast majority are poor, or in all other contexts where poverty is a rapidly moving target, is it fiscally responsible to encourage governments to allocate precious resources to continue to try to target poverty? The complexity in doing so comes at a high cost, not only fiscally, but often politically due to the errors. At the same time, the World Bank has clearly stated its support for universal social protection as central to ending poverty. In particular for governments with limited fiscal space, would it be more fiscally responsible to introduce, for example, a child benefit with limited age-based eligibility to for example, the first 1,000 days or greater depending on budget? Surely this is also much more cost effective for countries to manage, and is a direct investment in human capital. Given the mounting evidence on the shortcomings of PMT, and these associated high costs, what more cost effective approaches does this book promote and how do they link with the World Bank's commitment to promote universality?
Thu, 03/31/2022 - 09:13
Tomoo Okubo

Social protection programs are implemented by governments to achieve broad range of economic and social outcomes - including poverty reduction, inequality reduction, human capital development, gender equality and social inclusion. Just targeting the (monetary) poor HHs may be too narrow of an approach if we take into consideration the wider social impact and socially vulnerable groups - does the book discuss targeting with respects to all these broader social outcomes, not only poverty reduction?
Thu, 03/31/2022 - 09:16

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