POVERTY

Despite these advancements, three shortcomings still need to be addressed. First, in some countries there are significant portions of the poor not being reached by these programs (while non-poor groups benefit from them). In principle exclusion errors could be resolved via expanded coverage, but in the tighter fiscal context faced by the region, this is more difficult. Looking forward, exclusion errors will need to be corrected through the politically more costly route of reducing the number of non-poor households that are currently being covered.