Basic Concepts of Targeting

Targeting is a tool policy makers sometimes employ to make a program efficient. It is not an end in itself How much to target and how to do so depend on program-specific answers as to whether the gains outweigh the costs. 

The theoretical gain from targeting can appear to be large. In practice it is less than indicated here, because targeting is never completely accurate and because it has costs, including administrative, private, incentive or indirect, social, and political costs. 

Accurately distinguishing between who is and who is not needy incurs costs. The different types of costs are defined here, while evidence on their magnitudes is reviewed in the next section. 

Adiniiusttative costs are the costs to the program of gathering information to help make the decision about who should be admitted to the program. 

Incentive (or inditect) costs arise when eligibility criteria induce households to change their behavior in an attempt to become beneficiaries. They can be negative, for example, when a program open only to those below a minimum income causes some households to work less so that they fall below that minimum income. Sometimes they can be positive, for example, a food ration or daily meal supplied only to those children who attend school may encourage some families to enroll more of their children or ensure that they attend school every day. 

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Other review articles have been published on the radiation inactivation method (Pollard et al., 1955 Kempner and Schlegel, 1979), two of them recently (Jung, 1984 Harmon et al., 1985). Since we do not want to be repetitious, the theory and experimental procedure will only be described briefly, although enough details will be given to allow the reader to follow the discussion. We will focus our attention primarily on the basic concepts of target theory and protein inactivation. 

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