PhD student
Economics for everybody : Targeting social policies by Eric Teschke
Published on
In developing countries, targeting social policies is both critical and challenging. With limited income data, governments rely on approximative methods like Proxy-Means Tests (PMTs), which use observable characteristics to estimate poverty.
Eric Teschke’s research examines the effectiveness of PMTs across eight countries over several years. His findings reveal that, despite initial errors, PMTs are surprisingly effective at identifying chronically poor households while excluding non-poor ones.
Yet, his study also raises important questions: can these tools be improved to better capture the dynamics of poverty? Are alternatives viable?
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How can governments can target social policies to those most in need?
Eric Teschke is a PhD student at the Paris School of Economics and at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. During his PhD he also spent two years at Columbia University in New York and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research focuses on social protection and poverty in the Global South.