The analysis of targeting of cash benefits is typically silent on whether any success is due to
encouraging claims from the poor or to the decisions of administrators on the claims they
receive. By contrast, the paper models the probabilities of households’ knowledge of a new
social assistance scheme, of a claim conditional on knowledge, and of an award conditional
on knowledge and claim. It uses household survey data from Uzbekistan where a new social
assistance benefit is administered by community organisations. The paper therefore also
illustrates problems of design of decentralised social assistance schemes in developing
countries.