One side in the current debate about who benefits from growth has focused solely on average impacts on poverty and inequality, while the other side has focused on the diverse welfare impacts found beneath the averages. Both sides have a point. The evidence is compelling that the poor in developing countries do typically share in the gains from rising aggregate affluence and in the losses from aggregate contraction. But how much do poor people share in growth? Do they gain more in some settings than others? Do some gain while others lose? Does pro-poor growth mean more or less aggregate growth? Recent theories and evidence suggest some answers, but deeper microeconomic empirical work is needed on growth and distributional change. Only then will we have a firm basis for identifying the specific policies and programs needed to complement and possibly modify growth-oriented policies. This paper - a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to better inform development policy debates.

Growth, Inequality, and Poverty: Looking Beyond Averages

The paper critically reviews the methods available for the ex-post counterfactual analysis of programs that are assigned exclusively to individuals, households or locations. The discussion covers both experimental and non- experimental methods (including propensity-score matching, discontinuity designs, double and triple differences and instrumental variables). Two main lessons emerge: Firstly, despite the claims of advocates, no single method dominates; rigorous, policy-relevant evaluations should be open-minded about methodology. Secondly, future efforts to draw more useful lessons from evaluations will call for more policy-relevant measures and deeper explanations of measured impacts than are possible from the classic ("black box") assessment of mean impact.

/pdf/evaluating-anti-poverty-programs-2coaozx9ic.pdf

Evaluating anti-poverty programs

L'objectif de cette etude est de clarifier les relations entre l'irrigation et la pauvrete en offrant une revue objective de la recherche recente sur le sujet. Les questions cles abordees ici sont: (1) quel est le role du developpement et de la gestion de l'irrigation sur la reduction de la pauvrete? (2) quels sont les articulations et chemins par lesquels l'irrigation contribue a reduire la pauvrete? (3) quelle est l'ampleur des impacts anti-pauvrete de l'irrigation? et (4) quels sont les facteurs cles des impacts anti-pauvrete de l'irrigation? Notre revue se focalise sur des etudes empiriques d'actualite en Asie. La revue approfondie entreprise suggere qu'il y a de fortes connections entre l'irrigation et la pauvrete. Ces connections sont a la fois directes et indirectes. Les connections directes agissent a travers des effets localises et a l'echelle des foyers, tandis que les connections indirectes operent a travers des impacts collectifs ou a l'echelle sub-nationale et nationale. L'irrigation beneficie aux pauvres par le biais d'une production accrue, de rendements plus eleves, d'un plus faible risque d'echec cultural et d'une meilleure situation de l'emploi tout au long de l'annee, dans les exploitations comme en dehors. L'irrigation permet aux petits producteurs d'adopter des cultures plus diversifiees et de passer d'une production de subsistance, de faible valeur, a une production de forte valeur, orientee vers le marche. L'augmentation de la production donne acces aux pauvres a une nourriture abordable. Les connections indirectes operent a travers des effets a l'echelle regionale, nationale et de l'economie. Les investissements en irrigation agissent comme des modificateurs de production et d'approvisionnement, et ont d'importants effets positifs sur la croissance, beneficiant aux pauvres sur le long terme. Au-dela de ceci, les benefices de l'irrigation reviennent aussi aux pauvres et sans-terres sur le long terme, malgre le fait que, sur un plus court terme, les benefices vers ceux qui n'ont pas ou peu de terres peuvent etre faibles du fait que l'allocation de l'eau tend a etre basee sur les terres. En depit de cela, les pauvres et sans-terres beneficient, a la fois en termes absolus et relatifs, des investissements en irrigation. De recentes avancees dans les technologies d'irrigation, par exemple les systemes de micro-irrigation, ont un fort potentiel anti-pauvrete. Des etudes en cours dans des pays asiatiques supportent fortement le fait que l'irrigation aide a reduire a la fois la pauvrete permanente et temporaire. Au-dela de ceci, l'irrigation aide a alleger la pauvrete dans ses pires formes, nommement la pauvrete chronique. En general, l'irrigation augmente la productivite, favorise la croissance et reduit la pauvrete. Des exemples d'effets d'externalites negatives associes a des systemes irrigues de grande et moyenne echelle pointent vers des problemes de gestion, appelant par consequent a des mecanismes de reponse plus englobants de la part des communautes politiques et de gestion. Les impacts anti-pauvrete de l'irrigation peuvent etre intensifies en creant les conditions ou les environnements qui permettraient de realiser une inclusion fonctionnelle des pauvres. Ces conditions et environnements comprennent: (1) un acces equitable a la terre; (2) une gestion integree des ressources en eau; (3) un acces a de l'eau de surface et souterraine de bonne qualite et en quantite adequate; (4) une technologie moderne de production; (5) un passage a une production a forte valeur ajoutee, orientee vers le marche; et (6) des opportunites pour la vente des produits agricoles a faibles couts transactionnels. Les benefices de l'irrigation aux pauvres peuvent etre intensifies en initiant

/pdf/irrigation-and-poverty-alleviation-review-of-the-empirical-3l0oysd5ct.pdf

Irrigation and poverty alleviation: review of the empirical evidence

This article argues that social welfare policies may reduce international and domestic terrorism. Social policies likely affect terrorism in offsetting ways but, on balance, should diminish prefere...

On Welfare and Terror: Social Welfare Policies and Political-Economic Roots of Terrorism

The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Economic and social commission for asia and the pacific

Public spending is a potentially powerful instrument for fighting poverty. Generally, what is needed is universalism in certain spending categories (basic services) and finer targeting in others (for providing safety nets, for example). Public spending aims to promote efficiency (by correcting for various market failures) and equity (by improving the distribution of economic welfare). This paper, drawn from a book on public spending and the poor, is concerned with the latter. In it van de Walle focuses on three key questions: What is the welfare objective? How are the benefits of public spending currently distributed? How can that distribution be improved? We must first be clear about how performance is to be judged, says van de Walle. Different assumptions about policy objectives shape disagreements about program assessments and recommendations. Evaluating a policy's impact requires assessing how different things would have been without it, but quantifying a counterfactual is not easy. One approach - benefit incidence - ignores behavioral responses and second-round effects, and simply uses the cost of provision as a proxy for benefits received. Other methods focus entirely on the individual's valuation of the policy benefits, allowing for responses to changes in the individual's budget set. Some reasonably robust conclusions have emerged from studies of public spending incidence: ° Spending on basic services - notably primary and secondary education and basic health care - almost universally reaches the poor. The case for broad targeting, by expanding the share of public spending on these services, is well-substantiated. But even here, monitoring is required so that marginal investments are not lavished on better serving the better-off. ° Certain food subsidy and distribution schemes, social cash transfers (such as are common in the former Soviet Union countries and Eastern Europe), public employment schemes, and other targeted transfer schemes have at times been quite propoor. ° But many programs whose stated rationale is to reduce poverty have instead been dismal, expensive failures. A popular reaction has been to clamor for reform of public spending, to demand finer targeting of benefits to the poor. Most public spending programs are to some degree targeted. The question is, what degree of targeting is optimal? Other things being equal, the more ways one discriminates between beneficiaries, the greater targeting's impact on poverty. But other things are not equal. Fine targeting sometimes comes at a cost to the poor. Administrative costs may escalate, political support may vanish, and behavioral responses may add costs to targeted interventions. There is no simple answer about how much targeting is desirable, but empirical evidence from past studies suggests some clear principles. The optimal mix of targeted and universal poverty-reduction programs depends on several factors, including the characteristics of the poor (who they are, how many there are, and why they are poor) and country-specific circumstances (initial conditions, infrastructure development, and administrative capabilities). ° When poverty is widespread and administrative capacity is low, broad targeting is desirable and results from incidence of public spending studies should help guide sectoral and intrasectoral allocations. ° Generally, what is needed is a combination of universalism in certain spending categories and finer targeting in others (for providing safety nets, for example). Such a two-pronged approach is a sound starting point for policy design. But in implementing it, one should never confuse the ends and the means of policy. This paper - a product of the Public Economics Division, Policy Research Department - is derived from Incidence and Targeting: An Overview of Implications for Research and Policy, a chapter in the book Public Spending and the Poor: Theory and Evidence. The author may be contacted at dvandewalle@worldbank.org.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/383.pdf?abstractid=597227&mirid=3

Public Spending and the Poor: What We Know, What We Need to Know

A revised version is forthcoming in Review of Development Economics. Unless disparities in education are addressed, market-oriented reforms will generate inequitable agricultural growth in Vietnam. If the marginal gains from investment in physical capital depend positively on knowledge, but a household cannot hire skilled labor to compensate for low skills, then even if it has access to credit the household will achieve lower returns than an educated household. If, as is common, the income-poor are less educated because of failures in the credit market and because they live in areas where there is less access to schooling, then the poor will also have lower returns on investments. Van de Walle tests this argument for the case of irrigation infrastructure in Vietnam. She asks how a household's education level and demographic characteristics influence the gains to household income from irrigating previously unirrigated land. The net marginal benefit of irrigation increases strongly with the education of a household. The results suggest that unless disparities in education are addressed, market-oriented reforms will generate inequitable agricultural growth in Vietnam. This paper - a product of Public Economics, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the determinants of poverty and the policy implications. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. The author may be contacted at dvandewalle@worldbank.org.

Are Returns to Investment Lower for the Poor? Human and Physical Capital Interactions in Rural Vietnam

We must diversify and compare results from our methods of assessment, as well as broaden our definition of well-being, to see how public spending policies affect various facets of living standards. An important objective of public spending is to raise household living standards, particularly for the poor. But how can final impacts on this objective best be assessed? Evaluating a policy's impact requires assessing how different things would have been in its absence. But the counterfactual of no intervention is often tricky to quantify. Van de Walle surveys the methods most often used to assess the welfare effects of public spending. In studying the current state of the art she identifies some limitations of current practices and draws implications for best practice in future work. The methods used to assess welfare impacts broadly fall into two groups: Benefit incidence studies and behavioral approaches. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Benefit incidence studies ignore behavioral responses and second-round effects, and simply use the cost of provision as a proxy for benefits received. Behavioral approaches present quite different drawbacks, in attempting to represent individual benefits correctly. A number of recent studies usefully combine both approaches. It is still uncertain whether behaviorally consistent methods actually point to fundamentally different policy recommendations. What can be concluded is that we need to diversify and compare results from our evaluation methods and broaden our definition of well-being, to see how various facets of living standards are affected by public spending. This paper - a product of the Public Economics Division, Policy Research Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to analyze public spending and poverty issues.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/681.pdf?abstractid=620516&mirid=1&type=2

Assessing the Welfare Impacts of Public Spending

A change in the transport sector's current approach to selecting rural road investments is warranted. A proposed approach builds on some of the poverty-focused hybrid methods found in recent rural road appraisals-recognizing that an important share of the benefits to the poor from rural roads cannot be measured in monetary terms. Van de Walle examines how rural road investment projects should be selected and appraised when the objective is poverty reduction. After critically reviewing past and current practices, van de Walle develops an operational approach grounded in a public economics framework in which concerns of equity and efficiency are inseparable, information is incomplete in important ways, and resources are limited. She addresses a key problem: that an important share of the benefits to the poor from rural roads cannot be measured in monetary terms. The selection formula she proposes aims to identify places where poverty and economic potential are high and access is low. She illustrates the method using data for and project experience in Vietnam. Among the advantages of proceeding as outlined in her proposal: This approach holds the hope of building capacity and is participatory; it extracts local information that may not be readily available to the central government; and it appears to be feasible because it relies on local authorities participating in the appraisal of subprojects. This paper - a product of Public Economics, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study the impact of transport and other physical infrastructure on poverty. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. The author may be contacted at dvandewalle@worldbank.org.

Choosing Rural Road Investments to Help Reduce Poverty

Author notes: Dr. Steven Van de Walle is postdoctoral researcher at the Public Management Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He works on citizen-government relations and trust in government. Nick Thijs is researcher at Public Management Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He works on quality management in government. Prof. Dr. Geert Bouckaert is director of the Public Management Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. His main research interests are with public sector reform and performance management.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1609872_code436086.pdf?abstractid=1609872&mirid=5

van de Walle

Papers

Public Spending and the Poor: What We Know, What We Need to Know

Are Returns to Investment Lower for the Poor? Human and Physical Capital Interactions in Rural Vietnam

Assessing the Welfare Impacts of Public Spending

Choosing Rural Road Investments to Help Reduce Poverty

A tale of two charters