How Expansion of Public Services Affects the Poor: Benefit Incidence Analysis for Gadarif State from Sudan

الملخص

The study investigates whether the poor benefit more or less than the non-poor from an expansion in public services program in Gedarif State from eastern Sudan; and how government expenditure affects the welfare of different groups of people or individual households at the local level?. Using household survey data carried out in 2009; a sample of 40 clusters from the state was selected with 25 households from each selected cluster. The study followed the recommended standard World Bank methodologies by adopting a benefit incidence analysis techniques and tools to assess the impact of the water, electricity and health program on poverty and income distribution of population to identify the currant beneficiaries and the marginal benefit from increasing government expenditure, based on the geographical variation of localities in the state. A model proposed suggests that, an expansion of water and health programs would be decidedly pro-poor, while an expansion of electricity program would be pro-rich. Water and health programs displayed strong pro-poor and have a greater role for decreasing inequality and poverty in Gadarif State. This maximization appears to occur without policymakers taking into account distributional weights in their implicit social welfare function.