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Article Dans Une Revue The Journal of Development Studies Année : 2020

Proxy Means Testing Vulnerability to Measurement Errors ?

Résumé

Proxy Means Testing (PMT) is a popular method to target the poor in developing countries. PMT usually relies on survey-based consumption data and assumes random measurement errors – an assumption that has been challenged by recent literature. Using a survey experiment conducted in Tanzania, this paper brings causal evidence on the impact of non-random errors on PMT performances. Results show that non-random errors bias the coefficients from PMT models, resulting in a 5 to 27 per cent reduction in PMT predictive performances. Moreover, non-random errors induce a 10 to 34 per cent increase in the incidence of targeting errors when poverty is defined in absolute terms. More reassuringly, impacts on the ranking of households are smaller and essentially non-significant. Taken together, these results indicate that PMT performances are quite vulnerable to non-random errors when the objective is to target absolutely poor households, but remain largely unaffected when the objective is to target a fixed share of the population.
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Dates et versions

hal-03157274 , version 1 (19-10-2021)

Identifiants

Citer

Jules Gazeaud. Proxy Means Testing Vulnerability to Measurement Errors ?. The Journal of Development Studies, 2020, 56 (11), pp.2113-2133. ⟨10.1080/00220388.2020.1715942⟩. ⟨hal-03157274⟩
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