Benefit Incidence Analysis

Summary Tables
•	English (31kb PDF)
•	French (32kb PDF)
•	Russian (52kb PDF)
•	Spanish (30kb PDF)

Public spending on social services such as education and health care is generally considered a central redistributive or anti-poverty policy instrument in developing countries. Yet evaluating the actual distribution and poverty reduction impacts that such social expenditures achieve is challenging. This section reviews the techniques most commonly used, gives some examples of their application and outlines several limitations that must be taken into account when interpreting results.

This tool was prepared by the Research Department of the World Bank as part of the "Toolkit for Evaluating the Poverty and Distributional Impact of Economic Policies," available below.

More information on Benefit Incidence Analysis

"Analyzing the Incidence of Public Spending," Tool Kit for Evaluating the Poverty and Distributional Impact of Economic Policies, Demery (2003) (127kb PDF)
"Assessing the Welfare Impacts of Public Spending," van de Walle (1998), (2.66mb PDF)
"Poverty and Inequality in the Distribution of Public Education Spending in South Africa," Castro-Leal (1996) (1.77mb PDF)
"Poverty and Transfers in Yemen," van de Walle (2002c), (2.66mb)
"Poverty, Education and Health in Indonesia: Who Benefits from Public Spending?," Lanjouw et al. (2001), (3.94mb PDF)
"Public Social Spending in Africa: Do the Poor Benefit?," Castro-Leal et al. (1997) (93kb PDF)
"The Combined Incidence of Taxes and Public Expenditures in the Philippines," Devarajan and Hossain (1998), (941kb PDF)
"The Distribution of the Benefits from Social Services in Indonesia," van de Walle (1992), (5.04mb PDF)
"The Incidence of Social Spending in Ghana," Demery et al. (1995) (3.4mb PDF)
"Who Benefits from Increased Access to Public Services at the Local Level? A Marginal Benefit Incidence Analysis for Education and Basic Infrastructure," Ajwad and Wodon (2002) (189kb PDF)

Back to Impact Analysis: Direct Impact Analysis