Does social protection reach those left behind: empirical evidence from Botswana using multidimensional poverty approaches

Social protection policies are important for advancing the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, especially the call to leave no one behind. We employ multidimensional poverty measures to identify those left behind. Using data from the 2015/16 Botswana Multi-Topic Household Survey, this study compares the targeting performance of selected social assistance programmes according to: (a) the specific programme eligibility criteria; (b) the monetary poverty measure; and (c) the multidimensional poverty index. The overall results reveal high inclusion and exclusion error rates among most programmes, indicating that they perform poorly in reaching their intended beneficiaries. The results also reveal high under-coverage rates irrespective of the poverty measure used. However, when the programmes are ranked according to leakage rates, the results differ across the two poverty measures. Relying on the monetary poverty measure alone may send inadequate information to policymakers tasked with reforming Botswana’s national social protection policy.