Targeting in Social Programs

Who should be first in line for kidney transplants--the relatively healthy or the severely ill? Should chronic troublemakers be allowed to remain in public housing? Should perpetually disruptive students stay in classes where they can prevent other children from learning? Prominent legal scholar Peter H. Schuck and leading economist Richard J. Zeckhauser take on such vexing policy dilemmas in Targeting in Social Programs: Avoiding Bad Bets and Removing Bad Apples.

Schuck and Zeckhauser present a rigorous framework for analyzing many of the difficult choices facing policymakers. Most social programs seek to help "bad draws"--unfortunate, often low-income individuals. Poor targeting of scarce resources, however, often undermines both the effectiveness of those policies and their political support. Many policy failures occur when officials allocate these scarce resources to two groups of bad draws: "bad bets," who will derive substantially less benefit from the resources than would other bad draws, and "bad apples," whose behavior in the program imposes significant costs on other recipients. The authors show how to identify bad bets and bad apples, and how to treat them in ways that promote the greater public good.

This tough-minded book raises the right questions, those that society ignores at its peril, particularly to its less fortunate members. The answers it provides and reforms it suggests, though rarely easy and sometimes incomplete, will point social policy in the right direction.

Peter H. Schuck is Simeon E. Baldwin Professor of Law at Yale University. He was principal deputy assistant secretary for planning and evaluation in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Among his many books are Meditations of a Militant Moderate (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) and Diversity in America (Harvard University Press, 2003).

Richard J. Zeckhauser is Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He is the author, coauthor or editor of ten books, including The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite (Harvard, 2003), and more than 200 professional articles. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Econometric Society, and the Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Sciences).

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