Technical, objective, equitable and uniform? a critique of the Colombian system for selection of beneficiaries of social programmes, SISBEN

The targeting of resources for poverty reduction is central to the contemporary poverty orthodoxy. This recent stress on targeting heightens the importance of poverty information, giving rise to two divergent tendencies: the tightening-up of targeting through redoubled means-testing efforts and narrowed eligibility criteria - the technocratic approach -; and the development of a new epistemology of poverty based on qualitative and participatory research methods - the alternative approach. The way poverty is conceptualized, and the form in which information is gathered and presented to policy-makers, shape and limit the identification of target groups, the formulation of poverty reduction strategies and their translation into practice. Statistical and qualitative analysis of findings from socio-anthropological research in rural Colombia, reported in this paper, shows that the technocratic approach is less 'technical, objective, equitable and uniform' than it purports to be; and the alternative approach, incorporating poor people's assessments of poverty, is more valid than it is reputed to be - perhaps more than the Colombian targeting system. The best practice compromise is some combination of the two approaches, applied in a spirit of 'self-critical epistemological awareness' (Chambers 1997), central to the alternative approach and lamentably lacking from the technocratic one.