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Prioritarian rates of return to antipoverty transfers
Author(s) -
Barrientos Armando,
Dietrich Stephan,
Gassmann Franziska,
Malerba Daniele
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of international development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1328
pISSN - 0954-1748
DOI - 10.1002/jid.3613
Subject(s) - disadvantaged , valuation (finance) , economics , redistribution (election) , welfare , throwing , value (mathematics) , social welfare , public economics , redistribution of income and wealth , demographic economics , work (physics) , labour economics , economic growth , microeconomics , political science , public good , politics , market economy , finance , mechanical engineering , engineering , machine learning , computer science , law
A growing impact evaluation literature on antipoverty transfer programmes in low‐ and middle‐income countries measures changes in utilitarian terms, at their unit value. The paper argues that valuing antipoverty transfers is more appropriately done within a framework of prioritarian social welfare functions, as the very presence of these programmes indicates that polities place a greater value on gains and losses among the disadvantaged. The paper applies this framework to the Senior Citizen Grant in Uganda, including survey and experimental work throwing light on social preferences for redistribution. It finds that default utilitarian valuation significantly underestimates the social value of transfer programmes.