Reaching the Poor: Cash Transfer Program Targeting in Cameroon

This paper assesses the ex-post performance of two popular targeting mechanisms, Proxy Means Testing (PMT) and Community-Based Targeting (CBT), in a pilot cash transfer program in Cameroon. CBT is found to perform poorly in terms of selecting households with low per capita consumption when compared to PMT. CBT appears to select households with low physical and human capital, regardless of actual consumption level and shows more variability in the selection decision than PMT. The results suggest caution is needed in employing CBT methods to select households with low per capita consumption in an environment with high poverty rates and limited administrative capacity