Poverty-dominant program reforms: the role of targeting and allocation rules

We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing marginal reforms of transfer programs. The methods are based on Program Dominance curves that display cumulative program benefits weighted by powers of poverty gaps. These curves can be decomposed simply as sums of targeting dominance curves and allocation dominance ones, and can serve to verify whether the assessment of marginal program reforms is sensitive to the choice of poverty lines and poverty measures as well as to differences across programs in revenue sources and incentive effects.