TY - BOOK ID - 133701212 TI - Geographic Inequity in A Decentralized Anti-Poverty Program : A Case Study of China PY - 2007 PB - Washington, D.C., The World Bank, DB - UniCat KW - Absolute poverty KW - Anti-poverty programs KW - Data set KW - Developing countries KW - Economic Theory and Research KW - Income KW - Inequality KW - Macroeconomics and Economic Growth KW - Mean incomes KW - Policy ReseaRch KW - Poor areas KW - Poverty lines KW - Poverty Monitoring and Analysis KW - Poverty Reduction KW - Public Sector Management and Reform KW - Redistributive policies KW - Services and Transfers to Poor UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:133701212 AB - The central governments of many developing countries have chosen to decentralize their anti-poverty programs, in the expectation that local agents are better informed about local needs. The paper shows that this potential advantage of decentralized eligibility criteria can come at a large cost, to the extent that the induced geographic inequities undermine performance in reaching the income- poor nationally. These issues are studied empirically for (probably) the largest transfer-based poverty program in the world, namely China's Di Bao program, which aims to assure a minimum income through means-tested transfers. Poor municipalities are found to adopt systematically lower eligibility thresholds, reducing the program's ability to reach poor areas, and generating considerable horizontal inequity. ER -