THE ELUSIVE QUEST FOR THOSE MOST IN NEED

It seems plausible to argue that scarce resources such as social secur ity payments should be targeted to those most in need, and that income should play a large role in defining need. Evert though some aspects of targeting, such as whether to have tapered means tests or not, are obviously political in nature, it may appear that at least the identif ication of 'those most in need' in terms of income is largely a techni cal exercise. The argument of this article is that even the measuremen t of income is only partly a technical exercise.(1) It is also a highl y problematic and political one that will always lead to understandabl e resentment on the part of the nearly poor', that is, those who are e xcluded by policy decisions regarding components of the scale by which income is assessed. We illustrate this with an example of a hypotheti cal family payment where those who are classified as 'poor' and 'nearl y poor' on one income-scale are classified otherwise on a plausible al ternative scale. It does not follow that targeting of payments on the basis of income should be abandoned. But it does suggest that all targ eting should be recognised for the blunt political instrument that it is, and that its status as a precise technical tool for achieving grea ter efficiency be regarded with less confidence than is currently fash ionable.