1. Identifying and Targeting Vulnerable Groups
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Identifying and Targeting Vulnerable Groups
Sumiter S. Broca
Agriculture and Economic Development Analysis Division
IGWG-RTFG Bureau Meeting,
12 June 2003

2. Questions WHO is vulnerable? HOW to identify vulnerable people?
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Questions
WHO is vulnerable?
HOW to identify vulnerable people?
HOW to protect vulnerable people?
HOW to ensure that the vulnerable receive benefits
Remember that people are vulnerable to food insecurity in even the most affluent societies.
Ideally should be able to identify which individuals or households are vulnerable.
But very difficult to do.
So have to focus on groups

3. Identification IDEALLY: Identify individuals: problematic
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Identification
IDEALLY: Identify individuals: problematic
USUALLY: Identify vulnerable groups
PROFILING:
Livelihoods
Sources, income amount and variability, assets
Household characteristics
Race, class, caste, gender, place of origin or residence, illness/disability
Individual characteristics
Remember that people are vulnerable to food insecurity in even the most affluent societies.

4. Reasons for targeting Economy of resources:
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Reasons for targeting
Economy of resources:
Withhold public resources from less vulnerable
Redistribution of resources
Concentrate public support exclusively on vulnerable

5. Targeting: methods Nutrition programmes Food based interventions
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Nutrition programmes
Nutritional risk: vulnerable age or sex groups
Anthropometric screening: e.g. growth failure in children
Food based interventions
Means testing: what is hh, what is its income from ALL sources
Proxy means testing: use hh characteristics as indicators of economic status
1. certain age or sex groups, such as pregnant and lactating women and children under the age of two, are more physiologically vulnerable to malnutrition because of their elevated nutritional needs at their stage in the life cycle. Sometimes, nutritional risk is defined according to a family’s health history
2. Anthropometric screening e.g. growth failure in children , indicated by the change in their height or weight between two points in time. A child who is falling off his growth trajectory is at nutritional risk whether or not he falls below a fixed weight or height criterion.
Means testing: what constitutes the “household,” valuing all of that household’s income (including that derived from informal sector or home-produced goods), and adjusting for seasonally irregular income streams and local price variations (Grosh, 1994). Except in the case of the most basic means tests, it also requires the verification of the household’s reported income, which can be a difficult task in countries without formal tax or employment records. A proxy means test, on the other hand, uses certain household characteristics as indicators of economic status to identify eligible households. This method can be used when income is difficult to measure or verify or when the income criterion may serve as a labor disincentive (Grosh, 1994). Regardless of its form, means testing is burdensome for the beneficiary and for the government, and it requires a cadre of literate, numerate eligibility workers. In countries with low literacy and numeracy, this may be an unproductive use of scarce human resources.

6. Targeting: methods Geographic targeting
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Geographic targeting
Target by province, district, municipality etc
Then find schools, health clinics etc for delivery of food rations, food stamps, or food vouchers etc to clients
Self targeting: Individuals identify themselves as beneficiaries
Provide inferior goods
Provide through public facilities
Higher time costs or social stigma or lower wages (Maharashtra EGS)
Inferior foods are not necessarily inferior in nutritional quality, only in perception Inferior good is one of which the poor will demand more in response to a fall in price or an increase in income but that the rich choose not to consume due to taste, cultural preference, difficulty of preparation, or marketing presentation.
(For example, in Thailand in the 1970s, a subsidized rice was distributed consisting of 25 percent sticky rice and 75 percent ordinary rice, a mixture that was less preferable to consumers than either alone).
Delivering food through public health clinics or public schools may be self-targeting in places where the relatively well off use private clinics and schools.
Benefits may also be targeted by means of the time costs involved or if receiving a transfer is socially stigmatizing. May eliminate eligible beneficiaries as well as those outside the target group.
For example, high time costs may prevent very needy households from participating in a program. Even very poor households may refuse a benefit such as school meals) that stigmatizes them as being poor.
Maharashtra EGS relied on below market wages

7. Targeting: problems Leakages may be desirable Use
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Targeting: problems
Sharply focused targeting has costs:
Determining household income, assets etc is costly
Loss of political support
Disincentives
Leakages may be desirable
Use
household characteristics
Geographical region
Two kinds of leakage:
other members of the target household share supplementary food intended for one individual
ineligible households receive the benefit.
Leakage within the household is virtually unavoidable. It is simply not reasonable to expect households receiving a food supplement on behalf of one child to deny it to the other children in the household. Recipients of MCH supplementary food often freely acknowledge that the food is shared within their households
Plus In high-risk households, leakage to other children is likely to provide a benefit that they need (Beaton, 1993). In this sense, the target child or mother may be seen as an entry point into the household; thus, the benefits that are provided should be set with the recognition that they may be used to meet the needs of the entire household.

8. Conclusions
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Some targeting is desirable because resources are not infinite
Too sharply focused targeting may be self-defeating
In developing countries, income-based targeting is impractical
Should focus on easily identifiable household and individual characteristics