IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jodeso/v21y2005i1-2p121-142.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effectiveness of Food Assistance Programs in Bangladesh

Author

Listed:
  • Rinku Murgai
  • Salman Zaidi

    (Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit, South Asia Region, The World Bank, USA)

Abstract

Bangladesh boasts a wide array of targeted food assistance programs that strive to achieve a number of important developmental objectives. Findings from the 2000 Household Income and Expenditure Survey suggest that these programs are reasonably well-targeted towards the poor. Most of the pro-poor targeting is due to targeting the poor within communities rather than central actions to target poor areas. However, any definitive conclusions about the ‘pro-poor’ nature of spending on these programs are clouded by the survey findings which suggest that a large share of the total resources devoted to these programs disappear before reaching their intended beneficiaries. If these ‘unaccounted-for’ benefits are in fact appropriated by the non-poor, the incidence of spending on these programs would likely be pro-rich. Greater efforts to channel a higher share of resources to regions with greater need of assistance and to improve monitoring systems to reduce leakage from the system are likely to yield high dividends.

Suggested Citation

  • Rinku Murgai & Salman Zaidi, 2005. "Effectiveness of Food Assistance Programs in Bangladesh," Journal of Developing Societies, , vol. 21(1-2), pages 121-142, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jodeso:v:21:y:2005:i:1-2:p:121-142
    DOI: 10.1177/0169796X05053069
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0169796X05053069
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0169796X05053069?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ahmed, Raisuddin & Haggblade, Steven & Chowdhury, Tawfiq-e-Elahi (ed.), 2000. "Out of the shadow of famine: evolving food markets and food policy in Bangladesh," IFPRI books, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), number 0-8018-6476-3.
    2. Jayne, Thomas S. & Strauss, John & Yamano, Takashi & Molla, Daniel, 2002. "Targeting of food aid in rural Ethiopia: chronic need or inertia?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 247-288, August.
    3. Galasso, Emanuela & Ravallion, Martin, 2000. "Distributional outcomes of a decentralized welfare program," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2316, The World Bank.
    4. Alderman, Harold, 1988. "The twilight of flour rationing in Pakistan," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 245-256, August.
    5. Ahluwalia, Deepak, 1993. "Public distribution of food in India : Coverage, targeting and leakages," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 33-54, February.
    6. Ravallion, Martin, 2000. "Monitoring Targeting Performance When Decentralized Allocations to the Poor Are Unobserved," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 14(2), pages 331-345, May.
    7. Ravallion, Martin & Sen, Binayak, 1994. "Impacts on rural poverty of land-based targeting: Further results for Bangladesh," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 22(6), pages 823-838, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Martin Rama & Tara Béteille & Yue Li & Pradeep K. Mitra & John Lincoln Newman, 2015. "Addressing Inequality in South Asia," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 20395.
    2. Mehta, Aashish & Jha, Shikha & Quising, Pilipinas, 2013. "Self-targeted food subsidies and voice: Evidence from the Philippines," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 204-217.
    3. Mehta, Aashish & Jha, Shikha, 2014. "Pilferage from opaque food subsidy programs: Theory and evidence," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 69-79.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. World Bank, 2002. "Poverty in Bangladesh : Building on Progress," World Bank Publications - Reports 15303, The World Bank Group.
    2. Francken, Nathalie & Minten, Bart & Swinnen, Johan F.M., 2012. "The Political Economy of Relief Aid Allocation: Evidence from Madagascar," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 486-500.
    3. Asha Gunawardena & Kanchana Wickramasinghe, 2011. "Targeting and Distribution of Post-Tsunami Aid in Sri Lanka : A Critical Appraisal," Working Papers id:3939, eSocialSciences.
    4. World Bank & Asian Development Bank, 2003. "Bangladesh : Public Expenditure Review," World Bank Publications - Reports 13875, The World Bank Group.
    5. Jayne, T. S. & Strauss, John & Yamano, Takashi & Molla, Daniel, 2001. "Giving to the Poor? Targeting of Food Aid in Rural Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 887-910, May.
    6. Coady, David P., 2004. "Designing and evaluating social safety nets," FCND discussion papers 172, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    7. Chikako Yamauchi, 2010. "Community-Based Targeting and Initial Local Conditions: Evidence from Indonesia's IDT Program," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(1), pages 95-147, October.
    8. Elsa Valli, 2017. "Essays on social protection," Economics PhD Theses 1017, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    9. Mehta, Aashish & Jha, Shikha, 2014. "Pilferage from opaque food subsidy programs: Theory and evidence," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 69-79.
    10. Emanuela Galasso & Martin Ravallion, 2004. "Social Protection in a Crisis: Argentina's Plan Jefes y Jefas," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 18(3), pages 367-399.
    11. Pritchett, Lant & Sumarto, Sudarno & Suryahadi, Asep, 2001. "Targeted Programs in an Economic Crisis: Empirical Findings from Indonesia’s Experience," MPRA Paper 58727, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Jules Gazeaud & Victor Stephane, 2023. "Productive Workfare? Evidence from Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 105(1), pages 265-290, January.
    13. Brown, Caitlin & Ravallion, Martin & van de Walle, Dominique, 2018. "A poor means test? Econometric targeting in Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 109-124.
    14. Haggblade, Steven & Boughton, Duncan, 2013. "A Strategic Agricultural Sector and Food Security Diagnostic for Myanmar," Food Security International Development Working Papers 161372, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    15. Kurosaki, Takashi & Khan, Humayun & Shah, Mir Kalan & Tahir, Muhammad, 2011. "Natural Disasters, Relief Aid, and Household Vulnerability in Pakistan: Evidence from a Pilot Survey in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa," PRIMCED Discussion Paper Series 12, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    16. Ravallion, Martin & Galasso, Emanuela & Lazo, Teodoro & Philipp, Ernesto, 2001. "Do workfare participants recover quickly from retrenchment?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2672, The World Bank.
    17. Yu Chen & Sylvie Démurger, 2014. "Pro-rural Policies, Income, and Inequality: Evaluating a Cash-for-Work Program in Rural China," Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press, vol. 13(3), pages 87-114, Fall.
    18. Quisumbing, Agnes R., 2003. "Food Aid and Child Nutrition in Rural Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(7), pages 1309-1324, July.
    19. Ghazala Mansuri, 2004. "Community-Based and -Driven Development: A Critical Review," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 19(1), pages 1-39.
    20. Bommer, Christian & Dreher, Axel & Perez-Alvarez, Marcello, 2022. "Home bias in humanitarian aid: The role of regional favoritism in the allocation of international disaster relief," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jodeso:v:21:y:2005:i:1-2:p:121-142. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.