Social Assistance, Poverty and Equity in the Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic invests a considerable amount of public resources in transfer and subsidy programs with the main objective of redistributing income to (and subsidizing consumption of) the poor. This study measures the effectiveness with which publicly-financed transfers redistribute income. This study also assesses the potential of the Unified System of Beneficiary Identification (Sistema de Identificación de Beneficiarios - Indice de Condiciones de Vida, SIUBEN-ICV) to improve the targeting performance of social assistance programs against other Proxy Means Test (PMT) instruments. Finally, this study examines the redistributive potential of Comer es Primero and ILAE, two Conditional Cash Transfer programs recently launched by the Government, and of the possible changes in the rules of operation of the LPG gas subsidy.