Ensuring that the Poor Share Fully in the Benefits

If programs are undertaken without conscious attention to including disadvantaged groups, there are a priori reasons for suspecting that they will favor the better-off, thereby exacerbating inequalities. But such an outcome is far from inevitable. Many plausible approaches are available for directing benefits toward the poor; and several of these have proven effective often enough to deserve serious consideration for application elsewhere. Even when such approaches are applied, however, predicting the equity outcome of any given RBF strategy in any particular setting remains more of an art than a science; and only after the fact, through careful monitoring, is it possible to assess an RBF project’s equity consequences with reasonable certainty.