Andrew Fischer, Associate Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies, participated as one of two discussants in a webinar hosted by socialprotection.org, for the launch of an important new report on targeting effectiveness in current social protection policies in developing countries, written by Stephen Kidd and Diloá Athias, and published by Development Pathways and The Church of Sweden.
There were four webinar participants:
- Stephen Kidd (senior policy specialist and CEO at Development Pathways) outlined and discussed the evidence from the research
- Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona from UNRISD and Andrew Fischer provided expert commentaries to respond to the findings and their implications
- Gunilla Palm (advisor on Social Protection, Church of Sweden) introduced the session and invited questions from attendees
About the report
The report, entitled ‘Hit and Miss: An assessment of targeting effectiveness in social protection’, is the result of a global review of the effectiveness of different methods of selecting social protection recipients, both targeted and universal schemes.
The work, supported by the Church of Sweden, considered the effectiveness of 38 programmes across 23 low- and middle-income countries, including means-tested schemes and those using proxy means testing, community-based targeting, self-targeted and pension testing.
The research sought to answer both how effective the different types of targeting mechanisms are in reaching their intended recipients, and the effectiveness in reaching those living in extreme poverty specifically. The findings are a damning indictment of advocates for targeting effectiveness, with only one of the programmes reaching over half of the poorest 20 per cent of the households it is targeted at.