Targeting Poverty Under Complementarities: Evidence from Indonesia's Unified Targeting System

41 Pages Posted: 31 Aug 2017

See all articles by Achmad Tohari

Achmad Tohari

Airlangga University - Faculty of Economics and Business

Christopher Robert Parsons

The University of Western Australia - Department of Economics

Anu Rammohan

University of Sydney Business School

Abstract

Combining nationally representative administrative and survey data with official proxy means testing models and coefficients, we evaluate Indonesia's three largest social programs. The setting for our evaluation is the launch of Indonesia's Unified Targeting system, an innovation developed to reduce targeting errors and increase program complementarities. Introducing a new method of evaluation under the condition of multiple programs, we show that households receiving all three programs are at least 30 percentage points better off than those receiving none. Importantly, the bias from failing to account for program complementarities is greater in magnitude than the benefits of receiving a single program.

Keywords: poverty, targeting, Indonesia, complementarities

JEL Classification: D04, I32, I38, O12

Suggested Citation

Tohari, Achmad and Parsons, Christopher Robert and Rammohan, Anu, Targeting Poverty Under Complementarities: Evidence from Indonesia's Unified Targeting System. IZA Discussion Paper No. 10968, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3029839 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3029839

Achmad Tohari (Contact Author)

Airlangga University - Faculty of Economics and Business ( email )

Airlangga 4-6
Surabaya, East Java
Indonesia

Christopher Robert Parsons

The University of Western Australia - Department of Economics ( email )

35 Stirling Highway
Crawley, Western Australia 6009
Australia

Anu Rammohan

University of Sydney Business School ( email )

Cnr. of Codrington and Rose Streets
Sydney, NSW 2006
Australia

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