Designing Anti-Poverty Programs in Emerging Economies in the 21st Century: Lessons from Indonesia for the World. Issue 3 (2nd September 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Olken, Benjamin A.
• Is Part Of: Bulletin of Indonesian economic studies. Volume 55:Issue 3(2019)
• Page Start: 319
• Page End: 339
• Publication Date: 2019-09-02
• Subjects: Indonesia -- Economic conditions -- Periodicals; 330.9598
• DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2019.1690411
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0007-4918

Abstract

Abstract : Governments of developing countries around the world have dramatically expanded social protection programs for the poor in recent decades. In doing so, they face a host of challenges in the targeting, design and implementation of these programs. In this paper, I describe the results from more than a decade of collaboration with the Indonesian government to understand how best to tackle these challenges, drawing primarily on evidence from randomised controlled trials. I highlight results that show the advantages of both community-based targeting and self-targeting, the importance of tangible information about beneficiaries' rights in minimising leakage, and the remarkable impacts of conditional cash transfers in the medium term. I also describe several recent studies that use randomisation at scale to generate policy-relevant evidence.