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American Economic Review Vol. 115 No. 6 2025

Targeting Impact versus Deprivation

Johannes Haushofer1; Paul Niehaus2; Carlos Paramo3; Edward Miguel4; Michael Walker5

1 Department of Economics, Cornell University and Brooks School of Public Policy (email: ) · 2 Department of Economics, University of California-San Diego (email: ) · 3 Department of Economics, University of California-Berkeley (email: ) · 4 Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley and NBER (email: ) · 5 University of California, Berkeley Center for Effective Global Action (email: )

Abstract

A large literature has examined how best to target antipoverty programs to those most deprived in some sense (e.g., consumption). We examine the potential trade-off between this objective and targeting those most impacted by such programs. We work in the context of an NGO cash transfer program in Kenya, employing recent advances in machine learning methods and dynamic outcome data to learn proxy means tests that jointly target both objectives. Targeting solely on the basis of deprivation is not attractive in this setting under standard social welfare criteria unless the planner’s preferences are extremely redistributive.

DOI
10.1257/aer.20221650
Volume
115
Issue
6
Pages
1936-1974
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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