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| Proxy Means Testing to Identify the Poor for Social Protection: A Critical Appraisal |
| Tanweer-ul-Islam* |
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| Targeted social protection
programmes have recently been evolved in many parts of the developing world which
are aimed at providing social security to the destitute, poor and vulnerable. There
is a range of social safety nets such as cash transfer, targeted subsidies, micro
insurance, etc. However, the success of such programmes greatly depends upon
the identification of who benefits from these programmes and the practicality
of the methods and instruments used. The methods and instruments being used to
identify the poor are critically important for such programmes. Pakistan has
recently developed a methodology to identify the poor for cash support programme,
i.e. the poverty scorecard. Poverty scorecard is based on the statistical
method of Proxy Means Testing (PMT) which has recently gained significant popularity
in some other parts of the developing world. This paper critically evaluates
the PMT methods and identifies some of the common pitfalls of this approach and
suggests the ways to improve the method of identification. It adopts Pakistan’s
Poverty Scorecard as a case study and briefly assesses other instruments in
other countries such as Bangladesh and the Philippines.
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Tanweer-ul-Islam is an econometrician and Lecturer at
the NUST Business School, Islamabad.
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