Stephen Kidd

Asking whether the poor or the rich are the main beneficiaries of poverty-targeting in social protection probably seems like a strange question to many people. On the face of it, the answer appears obvious: surely logic dictates that it must be the poor? Furthermore, it is often assumed that universal provision delivers no particular advantage for the poor as they only receive the same level of benefit as the rich.

But, as so often happens in social protection, the seemingly obvious answer is the wrong answer. In reality, when comparing the two options of poverty-targeting and universal provision, the main beneficiaries of poverty-targeting are the rich while the poor are the main beneficiaries of universal provision.

How can this be? Well, the answer is found in the magic of taxation. Most national social protection schemes financed from general government revenues are paid from taxes. So, when assessing who benefits from social protection we need to take into account both the transfer itself and the tax that is used to finance the benefit.

A simple thought-experiment can demonstrate why the rich lose out economically much less from poverty-targeted social protection when compared to universal provision.

Imagine a country in which the population comprises five citizens. As in most countries, our imaginary country is highly unequal. The total income of all citizens is 10,000 units and Figure 1 shows the relative incomes of each of our five citizens: while the richest citizen has an income of 7,000 units, the poorest has an income of only 200 units.

Figure 1: Distribution of wealth across the five citizens of our imaginary country

Now, imagine two scenarios:

In the first, the country establishes a poor relief (poverty-targeted) programme – let’s call it a conditional cash transfer – for the poorest citizen, so only s/he benefits.

In the second scenario, the country establishes a universal scheme offering a transfer of equal value to all citizens.

Obviously, there is a significant difference in the level of investment required for the two scenarios. The poverty-targeted programme is, in our experiment, by far the cheaper of the two, at 0.5 per cent of GDP (i.e. a slightly higher cost than most poor relief schemes currently found in low- and middle-income countries, such as Brazil’s Bolsa Familia, Mexico’s Prospera and the Philippines’ Pantawid programme). The universal scheme, as would be expected, is much more expensive, at five per cent of GDP (a little lower than the cost of Iran’s universal transfer for households – a form of basic income grant – when it was first introduced, and slightly higher than Georgia’s universal old age pension). The higher cost reflects the reality of the political economy of social protection: that universal schemes not only have higher coverage levels but, since everyone benefits, are more popular than poverty-targeted programmes. As a result, they generate both higher expenditures and, very often, higher value transfers.

The analysis makes two simple assumptions: i) everyone in the population is taxed at the same rate; and, ii) the poverty-targeting is perfect, ensuring no leakage to those outside the poorest quintile. Given that perfect targeting is an illusion – since even the most effective poverty-targeted schemes have exclusion errors of around 50 per cent of their intended recipients – we bias the results towards making poverty-targeting more attractive.

Figure 2 shows the change in the incomes of the country’s citizens after both scenarios are implemented. While the poorest citizen does better than all other citizens under the poverty programme, s/he is, in fact, much better off under the universal programme, with an increase in income of 90 units rather than the 49 units received under the poverty-targeted scheme. Further, while, under the poverty programme, citizens 2, 3 and 4 lose out slightly, they are net beneficiaries under the universal programme. This is important in the context of low- and middle-income countries since it is common for over 80 per cent of the population to be living on low incomes (in most countries, the vast majority of the population lives under US$5.00 per day, in purchasing power parity terms, a very low amount).

Figure 2: Net income gains and losses under the poverty-targeted and universal schemes

However, when we examine the richest citizen, it is clear that s/he does best under the poverty-targeted programme. While s/he loses some income under poverty-targeting, it is minimal since the tax paid to finance this relatively small programme is also minimal. His/her net loss under the universal scheme is much larger, despite receiving the same transfer as the other citizens. In fact, the losses of the richest citizen are equal to the gains of the other four citizens.

While this is only a thought-experiment, it mimics real life. It explains why we often find poverty-targeted schemes dominating in countries where democracies are weak: in such contexts, social protection schemes are often designed to respond to the interests of the rich, who want low taxes, rather than the interests of the majority of citizens. A key aim of poverty-targeting is to minimise taxation, which disproportionately hits the wealthy (even when taxation is not progressive): that’s why Trump’s tax cuts in the USA have been strongly advocated – and welcomed – by elites. Austerity measures in Europe have similarly been designed to cut the budgets of welfare programmes for the poor while lowering the overall tax burden. Indeed, as the World Bank (2015) itself has admitted (albeit in a paper it didn’t publish): “The historical … evidence suggests that the forces pushing for better [in other words, poverty] targeting are more regularly motivated by cutting entitlement bills and ensuring financial sustainability than by helping the poor.” By ‘financial sustainability,’ we should understand ‘lower costs and taxes’ since, in reality, universal schemes, despite their higher costs, are more financially sustainable than poverty-targeted programmes, due to their popularity which, as noted above, is derived from the fact that everyone benefits.

Since the recipients of poverty-targeted schemes are politically weak, the programmes themselves tend to be of low quality, with high exclusion errors and low-value transfers. Consequently, as our thought experiment showed, the impacts of poverty-targeted programmes on poverty are much lower than universal schemes (for example, the impacts of Brazil’s Bolsa Familia scheme on poverty and inequality are a fraction of the impacts of the country’s almost universal pension scheme). Further, they often include conditions and sanctions – the so-called conditional cash transfers – with elites using poverty-targeted transfers as a means of controlling the behaviour of the poor. Sometimes, they are delivered as workfare, often with negative consequences for poor families who are obliged to work long hours for little pay (for example, the Young Lives project has demonstrated that Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Scheme has actually made recipients poorer).

Paradoxically, therefore, poverty-targeting has to be understood as pro-rich rather than pro-poor. If progressive social protection policies are to be implemented, it is important that those working on social protection understand that it is universal schemes that are the most pro-poor, a result of their lower exclusion of the poor and higher impacts on the well-being of those living in poverty.

In reality, however, even though the rich lose out economically from universal schemes, they benefit in many other ways. The universal provision of services delivers more equal, happier, peaceful and more prosperous societies. In such societies, the rich don’t have to hide behind high walls and armed guards but can fully benefit from living in safer and more cohesive societies. It’s no coincidence that the countries most committed to universal provision – the Nordic countries – are among the most prosperous, equal and happiest societies. In effect, therefore, universal provision is neither pro-poor nor pro-rich but pro-all.

Does this simple thought-experiment explain why some institutions – such as the World Bank and IMF – promote poverty-targeting while opposing universal schemes? (Of course, they are not alone: bilateral donors usually support and finance poverty-targeted programmes across Africa and Asia, although there are notable exceptions such as the United Kingdom’s and Ireland’s financing of a universal pension in Uganda and the European Union’s financing – through UNICEF – of a pilot universal child benefit in Angola). An interesting question is whether the support for poverty-targeting within these institutions is the result of an ongoing allegiance to a pro-rich neoliberal ideology or because their staff actually do not understand who are the true beneficiaries of poverty-targeting? I suspect that it is a mix of both.

If pro-all inclusive social protection systems are to be established in low- and middle-income countries, it will be necessary for the voices of the majority of the population to be heard, in particular during elections. Developing countries need progressive politicians who can see through the myth that targeting the poor is pro-poor and, instead, outline a vision of an inclusive social protection system benefitting all citizens – including those living in extreme poverty – through the effective and fair redistribution of wealth. Such politicians will be richly rewarded at the polls.