ABSTRACT
This chapter examines various social programs in Argentina, Bangladesh, and India, and focuses on how targeting performance varied with aggregate outlays. The results suggest that it tends to be program spending on the non-poor that is protected from budget cuts. In principle at least, it has long been recognized that political economy plays an important role in determining the incidence of budget cuts required to assure macroeconomic stability. The marginal odds of participation estimates suggest that an aggregate contraction in primary schooling would be borne heavily by the poor. Indeed, automatic protection is the essential idea of an important and long-standing class of anti-poverty programs, typified by the famous Employment Guarantee Scheme in the state of Maharashtra in India. Investing in credible program impact assessments can create the information base needed to more effectively resist short-term political pressures during a time of fiscal adjustment.
