Abstract: Currently, the Russian Federation is actively modernizing the social support system of the population, taking place in the context of achieving the national development goals until 2030, which include the goal of reducing the poverty level. However, despite the broad architecture of the social protection system, the poverty level in the Russian Federation remains significant, which actualizes academic research on fine-tuning the targeted social support system. The subject of the study is the effectiveness of government spending on the financial provision of targeted social benefits (first of all, the monthly allowance in connection with the birth and upbringing of a child under 17 years of age as the main targeted payment in the Russian architecture of targeted social support measures). Based on the indicators proposed by the author, an assessment of the social and budgetary effectiveness of the monthly allowance in connection with the birth and upbringing of a child under 17 years old was carried out. It is concluded that there are "inadequate funds" in the structure of budget expenditures directed to the financial provision of this payment, creating a surplus (surplus) of income for some recipient households in relation to the subsistence minimum. This property is caused by the discrete procedure for determining the amount of payment for households with different incomes. At the same time, it is shown that the maximum payment amounts are insufficient to remove the least well-off households with children from the poverty zone. Moreover, the author's analysis showed the cost comparability of these post-transfer deficits and income surpluses, which made it possible to form the author's proposals for targeted redistribution of budget funds. So, based on the identified problems, changes are proposed to the procedure for assigning monthly allowances in connection with the birth and upbringing of a child under 17 years old, related to the transition to a continuous determination of the amount of payment based on the size of the income deficit of the recipient household. The proposed redistribution of budget funds makes it possible to completely overcome the poverty of households with children and does not require additional budget expenditures. These results have high practical significance for the activities of the Ministry of Labor of Russia and the Ministry of Finance of Russia, as well as regional executive authorities responsible for the implementation of social policy.