Who Benefits from Increased Access to Public Services at the Local Level? A Marginal Benefit Incidence Analysis for Education and Basic Infrastructure

Do poor people benefit more or less than the nonpoor from an expansion in access to public services? And do those benefits depend on the existing level of access? Answering these questions is essential to strategies for empowering (or “investing in”) poor people, but the lack of panel data or repeated crosssectional data in poor countries has often made it impossible. This paper proposes a methodology for answering these questions using data from only a single cross-section survey. We argue that the methodology may be useful for monitoring the allocation of public expenditures in a context of decentralization, and we demonstrate this by applying it to local-level data from Bolivia and Paraguay. The results indicate that the marginal benefit incidence is higher (or at least not systematically lower) for the poor than for the nonpoor in education, but this is not the case for many basic infrastructure services. More generally, the poor seem to gain access only once the nonpoor already have high levels of access. This suggests that pro-poor policies must be implemented if the poor are to reap the benefits of gains in access faster.Benefit incidence analysis; education; basic infrastructure

Lifeline or Means-Testing? Electric Utility Subsidies in Honduras

Many countries around the world have implemented subsidies for utility consumption, especially in the case of water and electricity. Most subsidies take the form of a lifeline or increasing block tariff, whereby households that consume less pay less on a unit basis. The idea is that households with low consumption levels are likely to be poor, and some intervention is warranted to enable them to meet their basic needs (the lifeline) at an affordable cost. Whether such subsidies are successful at helping the poor is not clear. In this chapter we assess the targeting performance of a similar subsidy for electricity implemented in Honduras. The subsidy is targeted through the lifeline principle; however, because the consumption threshold for eligibility is relatively high (300 kWh per month), and because those with access to electricity tend to be less poor than those without access, the program’s overall performance is low in terms of poverty reduction. Targeting through means-testing rather than a lifeline, or at least a lower threshold for the lifeline, could help improve the impact of the subsidy, and based on experience in other countries, would not necessarily imply high administrative costs.Electricity subsidies; ROC curves; targeting

Who Benefits from Increased Access to Public Services at the Local Level? A Marginal Benefit Incidence Analysis for Education and Basic Infrastructure

Do poor people benefit more or less than the nonpoor from an expansion in access to public services? And do those benefits depend on the existing level of access? Answering these questions is essential to strategies for empowering (or “investing in”) poor people, but the lack of panel data or repeated crosssectional data in poor countries has often made it impossible. This paper proposes a methodology for answering these questions using data from only a single cross-section survey. We argue that the methodology may be useful for monitoring the allocation of public expenditures in a context of decentralization, and we demonstrate this by applying it to local-level data from Bolivia and Paraguay. The results indicate that the marginal benefit incidence is higher (or at least not systematically lower) for the poor than for the nonpoor in education, but this is not the case for many basic infrastructure services. More generally, the poor seem to gain access only once the nonpoor already have high levels of access. This suggests that pro-poor policies must be implemented if the poor are to reap the benefits of gains in access faster

Who Benefits from Increased Access to Public Services at the Local Level? A Marginal Benefit Incidence Analysis for Education and Basic Infrastructure

Do poor people benefit more or less than the nonpoor from an expansion in access to public services? And do those benefits depend on the existing level of access? Answering these questions is essential to strategies for empowering (or “investing in”) poor people, but the lack of panel data or repeated crosssectional data in poor countries has often made it impossible. This paper proposes a methodology for answering these questions using data from only a single cross-section survey. We argue that the methodology may be useful for monitoring the allocation of public expenditures in a context of decentralization, and we demonstrate this by applying it to local-level data from Bolivia and Paraguay. The results indicate that the marginal benefit incidence is higher (or at least not systematically lower) for the poor than for the nonpoor in education, but this is not the case for many basic infrastructure services. More generally, the poor seem to gain access only once the nonpoor already have high levels of access. This suggests that pro-poor policies must be implemented if the poor are to reap the benefits of gains in access faster

Lifeline or Means-Testing? Electric Utility Subsidies in Honduras

Many countries around the world have implemented subsidies for utility consumption, especially in the case of water and electricity. Most subsidies take the form of a lifeline or increasing block tariff, whereby households that consume less pay less on a unit basis. The idea is that households with low consumption levels are likely to be poor, and some intervention is warranted to enable them to meet their basic needs (the lifeline) at an affordable cost. Whether such subsidies are successful at helping the poor is not clear. In this chapter we assess the targeting performance of a similar subsidy for electricity implemented in Honduras. The subsidy is targeted through the lifeline principle; however, because the consumption threshold for eligibility is relatively high (300 kWh per month), and because those with access to electricity tend to be less poor than those without access, the program’s overall performance is low in terms of poverty reduction. Targeting through means-testing rather than a lifeline, or at least a lower threshold for the lifeline, could help improve the impact of the subsidy, and based on experience in other countries, would not necessarily imply high administrative costs