Most countries target some social protection programs to selected people; reviewing the current knowledge on this subject can inform the formulation of policy.

Synopsis of 10 Key Messages

Message 1. Targeting selected categories, families, or individuals can play a valuable role within the framework of universal social protection (USP).

Message 2. Measuring the accuracy and costs of targeting can be done in many ways; judicious choices will consider a range of them.

Message 3. Surveying international targeting outcomes shows that social assistance coverage is incomplete but progressive, although there is wide variation among countries and programs. To reduce poverty, it is usually more cost-effective to ensure that a greater share of benefits accrue to the poor than to expand coverage broadly.

Message 4. The various costs of targeting selected groups, families, or individuals are usually low or within an acceptable range.

Message 5. Good delivery systems are critical for delivering all social protection programs, especially targeted programs.

Message 6. A range of targeting methods exist; program objectives and the country, social, and political context are likely to influence the choice; and there is no absolute ranking of methods.

Message 7. There are better and worse ways to implement each targeting method, and lessons have been learned over time.

Message 8. Income dynamics and shocks are significant and pose difficult challenges for eligibility determination processes; some targeting methods are more agile than others.

Message 9. Advances in technology—Information and communications technology, big data, and machine learning— offer the promise of significant improvements in targeting accuracy but are not a panacea; better data may matter more than greater sophistication in inference.

Message 10. How countries target is often and should always be a dynamic story.