Geographical Targeting For Poverty Alleviation

.."in many developing countries, there are large differences in economic conditions and the standard of living between regions, and even between communities within the same region. In many countries, poverty has a clear geographic dimension, since the poor are often concentrated in pockets of poverty. Therefore, the design of poverty alleviation policies must also have a signficant spatial component." Although development projects are carefully designed and meticulously evaluated for cost effectiveness and benefits, too many of them are not sufficiently targeted geographically. The growing availability and use of spatial data, organized in a computer system such as a geographical information system (GIS), makes it more feasible to analyze the impact of projects in specific locales and to achieve more effective targeting. 'Geographical Targeting for Poverty Alleviation' introduces the basic concepts of a GIS. It also demonstrates how to organize geographic and nongeographic data. In addition, it presents different methods for using the data of the Household Income and Expenditure Survey, together with other surveys and the population census, to provide estimates for the standard of living and the incidence of poverty incidence in different geographical areas of a country. Ultimately, these estimates should be used to establish guidelines for targeting poverty alleviation projects. This publication illustrates different GIS applications for identifying the project's target population, determining the project's spatial 'sphere of influence' or deciding where to locate public facilities. This publication is of interest to task managers, economists, development researchers, and geographers.

"Using recently completed "poverty maps" for Cambodia, Ecuador, and Madagascar, the authors simulate the impact on poverty of transferring an exogenously given budget to geographically defined subgroups of the population according to their relative poverty status. They find large gains from targeting smaller administrative units, such as districts or villages. But these gains are still far from the poverty reduction that would be possible had the planners had access to information on household level income or consumption. The results suggest that a useful way forward might be to combine fine geographic targeting using a poverty map with within-community targeting mechanisms. This paper--a product of the Poverty Team, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to develop tools for the analysis of poverty and income distribution"--World Bank web site.

This third and final volume from the City Study analyzes the structure of Bogota and Cali, Colombia by modelling different markets and the behavior of individuals, households, firms, and governments within these markets. Simple economic reasoning is used to understand the urban behavior that can determine a city's overall appearance and structure. The author underlines the importance of this understanding which, he argues, could lead to the creation of more effective urban policies. This study links infrastructure requirements and supply to the behavior of urban life and to the existing income distribution in the city. The author concludes that institutional responses to the rapidly changing and unpredictable demands of metropolitan residents must become an inherent part of city structure, and that this would be the most practical way of coping with urban growth.

Using recently completed "poverty maps" for Cambodia, Ecuador, and Madagascar, the authors simulate the impact on poverty of transferring an exogenously given budget to geographically defined subgroups of the population according to their relative poverty status. They find large gains from targeting smaller administrative units, such as districts or villages. But these gains are still far from the poverty reduction that would be possible had the planners had access to information on household level income or consumption. The results suggest that a useful way forward might be to combine fine geographic targeting using a poverty map with within-community targeting mechanisms.

Geographic targeting of social programs to the poor has become increasingly important in Peru. The potential payoffs of such targeting are large, and differences in outcomes with different targeting indicators are small.

Presents and compares a large selection of poverty and food-security mapping methodologies in use. The choice of a poverty-mapping methodology depends on a number of logical and legitimate considerations, such as the objectives of the poverty mapping exercise, philosophical views on poverty, limits on data and analytical capacity, and cost.

"The authors employ the recently completed "poverty map" for Morocco, referring to the year 2004, as a tool for an ex-ante evaluation of the distributional incidence of geographic targeting of public resources. They simulate the impact on poverty of transferring an exogenously given budget to geographically defined sub-groups of the population according to their relative poverty status. In both rural and urban areas, the findings reveal large gains from targeting smaller administrative units, such as communes or districts. However, these gains are still far from the poverty reduction that would be possible had the planners had access to information on household level income or consumption. The results indicate that a useful way forward might be to combine fine geographic targeting using a poverty map with within-community targeting mechanisms."--World Bank web site.