Response to 'Targeting Social Cash Transfers' comment

Responding to the paper Targeting Social Cash Transfers comment, (on the process of defining target groups and designing the targeting mechanism for the Malawi Social Cash Transfer Scheme), the author of this response suggests that the Comment is shaky, incoherent, defeatist, misguided and - in the final analysis - fatally flawed.

The respondent argues that the comment is:

• shaky because it grounds its analysis on questionable statistics
• incoherent, because its terminology is muddled and confusing
• defeatist because it accepts, even perpetuates, the myth that cash transfers to the non-labour-constrained poor create dependency
• misguided because the starting point for a discussion of targeting options should be a clear vision of what the government wants to achieve, not a personal assumption about what the government might be able to afford
• fatally flawed by basing it on the assumption of "perfect targeting"

Please also see separate document: Targeting Social Cash Transfers comment