Community Based Targeting Mechanisms for Social Safety Nets

This paper interprets case studies and theories of community involvement in beneficiary selection and benefit delivery for social safety nets. It says that several considerations should be carefully balanced in assessing the advantages of using community groups as targeting agents:

• Benefits from utilizing local information and social capital may be eroded by costly rent-seeking;
• The potential improvement in targeting criteria from incorporating local notions of deprivation must be balanced with the possibility of influence by the elite and non poor;
• Performance may be undermined by unforeseen strategic targeting by local communities in response to national funding and evaluation criteria, or by declines in political support.

The paper concludes that:

• National political economy effects are likely to be complex and may result in paradoxical undermining of safety nets;
• Communities vary in their ability to mobilize information and implement effective monitoring systems;
• Local communities will vary in their willingness to target the poor;
• Evaluation and funding of community-based targeting poses several special conceptual problems. Community based targeting is likely to offer advantages over other targeting mechanism when communities can be clearly defined;
• To be cost-effective, community-based targeting may need to take place at a large enough scale, but this is not always practical.