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This paper analyzes household data from nine programs in the Sahel region using a harmonized approach to compare Proxy-Means Testing (PMT) and Community-Based Targeting (CBT) as conducted in practice, once geographical targeting has been applied. Results show that the targeting performance measured depends critically on the definition of the targeting objectives, share of beneficiaries selected, and indices used to evaluate targeting. While PMT performs better in reaching the poorest households based on per capita consumption, it differs little from CBT, random or universal selection when distribution-sensitive measures are employed, or when food security is used as the welfare metric. Administrative costs associated with targeting represent only a small share of budgets. Results emphasize the importance of studying programs as implemented in practice instead of relying on simulations of targeting performance. They also suggest that PMT and CBT contribute little to poverty or food insecurity reduction efforts in poor and homogeneous settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benin has witnessed significant economic growth over the past decades, positioning itself as a rising economy in the west African subregion. This notwithstanding, persistent subnational differences in poverty were observed, suggesting a challenge of growth inclusiveness. This study provides evidence on the effects of human capital differences, isolation, and institutional quality on the determinants of household expenditure and factors that explain the southern-northern welfare gaps. This study employs a decomposition technique based on re-centred influence functions. I find significant spatial differences in consumption expenditure at the mean and across selected quantiles, with an increasing gap along welfare distribution and driven largely by differences in the returns to households' endowments in social public infrastructure. Access to energy and human capital measured by the education level of the head of the household generally favours the rich in the leading region and contributed significantly to explaining the difference in the welfare gap. The difference in access to roads widens the gap for the poor, whereas governance quality at the local level reduces it. To reduce the poverty gap, a public policy to improve returns of household endowments in the social sector should be integrated with other initiatives to address the underlying determinants of inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses poverty dynamics and checks for the existence of poverty traps among refugee and host communities living close to each other in Uganda. Although some non-linearities emerge in asset dynamics, there is convergence towards one stable equilibrium for the whole sample that suggests the existence of a structural poverty trap. However, households are quite heterogeneous: when analysing refugees and hosts separately, refugees converge to a lower own-group equilibrium than hosts. The household size and education are asset growth enablers for both communities. Noticeably, access to land, past history and social cohesion are also significant correlates of refugees' asset dynamics. From a policy perspective, structural poverty traps are bad news, because standard anti-poverty interventions would not unlock the trap. Our results stress the need of more structural approaches aimed at promoting economic growth in the whole area where refugee and host communities live, targeting both communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uganda is home to 1.5 million refugees from DRC, Burundi, South Sudan and other countries. The Uganda political framework is one of the most progressive and inclusive toward refugees. Only a fraction of the refugees is likely to revert to their home countries. The papers collected in this special issue assess Uganda's progressive refugee policy with reference to how it functioned in the era of COVID-19 using a unique panel data collected between 2017 and 2021. The findings of the special issue stress that the support to refugees and hosts is helping to manage daily challenges but not to ultimately get them out of poverty. Further, this support was insufficient to provide a comprehensive response to COVID-19. For the long-term sustainable integration and development, new policy approaches are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies educational aspirations and grade achievements of teenagers in India, using Structural Equation Modelling with data from the Young Lives Study. The analysis differentiates direct effects of relevant socio-economic and individual characteristics on educational output from indirect effects through aspirations. In this sample, some student characteristics – parents' education, mothers' caste and the student's gender – have no direct effect on educational output, but an indirect effect on educational aspirations going through abilities. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and in particular girls, are at a disadvantage at age 12 because they have accumulated lower cognitive abilities. Abilities shape aspirations, which then impact educational output beyond the mere effect of abilities. Girls are at a double disadvantage: besides lower average skills at age 12, they developed lower aspirations than boys of the same characteristics. The economic situation of the household was neither directly nor indirectly related with students' achievements in school. These results help distinguish aspirations as drivers of behaviour from aspirations as correlates of other characteristics, and they have relevant policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the relationships between multidimensional and monetary poverty indices in international and national poverty profiles, and empirically explore the consequences of identifying poor people relying on a combination of both approaches. Taking first a cross-country perspective, focusing on 90 countries in the developing world, we corroborate that the incidence of poverty by money metrics and the global Multidimensional Poverty Index, a non-monetary measure of poverty, are correlated. Digging deeper, we use microdata from six countries—Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Uganda—to study the joint densities of monetary and multidimensional welfare and the poverty identification mismatches for a comprehensive array of poverty line pairs. Mismatches are important, particularly in the poorer countries. Although mismatches could be avoided by combining both approaches in a dual cutoff-based poverty measure, the choice of the monetary poverty line remains a considerable issue as it changes the nonmonetary composition of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]