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Many developing countries use food-price subsidies or controls to improve nutrition. However, subsidizing goods on which households spend a high proportion of their budget can create large wealth effects. Consumers may then substitute toward foods with higher nonnutritional attributes (such as taste) but lower nutritional content per unit of currency, weakening or perhaps even reversing the subsidy's intended impact. We analyze data from a randomized program of large price subsidies for poor households in two provinces of China and find no evidence that the subsidies improved nutrition. In fact, they may have had a negative impact for some households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to health-care is low in developing countries. Poor people are less likely to seek care than those who are better off. Community-based health insurance (CBI) aims to improve healthcare utilisation by removing financial barriers, unfortunately CBI has been less effective in securing equity than expected. Poor people, who probably require greater protection from catastrophic health expenses, are less likely to enrol in such schemes. Therefore, it is important to implement targeted interventions so that the most in need are not left out. CBI has been offered to a district in Burkina Faso, comprising 7762 households in 41 villages and the district capital of Nouna since 2004. Community wealth ranking (CWR) was used in 2007 to identify the poorest quintile of households who were subsequently offered insurance at half the usual premium rate. The CWR is easy to implement and requires minimal resources such as interviews with local informants. As used in this study, the agreement between the key informants was more (37.5%) in the villages than in Nouna town (27.3%). CBI management unit only received nine complaints from villagers who considered that some households had been wrongly identified. Among the poorest, the annual enrolment increased from 18 households (1.1%) in 2006 to 186 (11.1%) in 2007 after subsidies. CWR is an alternative methodology to identify poor households and was found to be more cost and time efficient compared to other methods. It could be successfully replicated in low-income countries with similar contexts. Moreover, targeted subsidies had a positive impact on enrolment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subsidies to residential utility customers are important in-kind transfer mechanisms in developing countries. Do these subsidies reach the poor? This article finds the average targeting performance of water and electricity subsidies to be similar to that of other social-transfer mechanisms using the same targeting method. The most common form — a quantity-based consumption subsidy aiming to subsidise low-volume customers — is highly regressive. Many geographically-targeted and most means-tested utility subsidies are progressive, but still exclude many poor households. Connection subsidies are an attractive alternative in low coverage areas, but they will only reach the poor if utilities extend network access to poor households and if households choose to connect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article briefly discusses an article published in the same issue concerning sanitation for poor people and examined the relative benefits of financial subsidies, health information, or increased availability of hygienic latrines for purchase and found subsidies provided the greatest benefit.