Assessing the social welfare effects of government transfer programs : some international comparisons

This paper offers a new way of assessing government cash transfers using a social welfare function framework. It demonstrates how one can use social welfare functions to measure the efficiency of such program s without requir ing the specif ication of a poverty line or particular poverty measures . The paper introduces three alternative principles of targeting, which provide a basis for measuring program efficiency. By applying the methodology developed in this paper , we compare the targeting efficiencies of 44 countries , which include both middle and high income countries .