Poverty measurement and analysis

Accurate poverty measurement and analysis is critical both for the design and monitoring of development strategies and projects.  Yet, still too often, poverty is not correctly measured and assessed due to either data limitations or analytical mistakes.  In addition, the multi-dimensional nature of poverty poses substantial methodological challenges that should not be underestimated.

Robust measures of income poverty can overcome these numerous methodological challenges through the construction of comprehensive consumption expenditure aggregates, their adjustment to price differences and in the transformation of household level expenditure into personal needs.   The presence of adequate data in the form of high quality and comprehensive sample household surveys is key to appropriate poverty measurement.  Of course, poverty measures based on income and consumption aggregates have limitations.  However, they remain the main point of reference because they are directly applicable to the wide range of economic and social protection policies where 'monetary gaps' are addressed with various 'monetary incentives'.

Moving beyond income-based approaches, there are several other important aspects of deprivation and vulnerability which must feature in an understaning of poverty.  These include:

• Food security;
• Access to livelihoods and markets;
• Access to water and sanitation;
• Access to health, education and other services;
• Vulnerability to disasters;
• Child welfare (including child labour and child abuse); and
• Social exclusion.

Research on these aspects of poverty can be used to devise specific sector policies.  These issues are usually best explored through a combination of participatory, qualitative and quantative research, ideally using a 'q-squared' approach.  Qualitative analysis is particularly important, for instance, to understand the living conditions of persons with disabilities or issues related to discrimination and social exclusion.  OPM has extensive experience in the qualitative analysis of poverty and vulnerability.

An important and different dimension of poverty measurement, which is also directly linked to different policy interventions, is the dynamics of poverty (duration of poverty and movements into and out of poverty) and vulnerability to poverty in relation to a number of uninsured risks, which depend both on the specific characteristics of each country as well as individual household attributes.  For both poverty dynamics and vulnerability assessments, OPM employs the most up-to-date instruments and methodologies to provide policy-relevant measurements and assessments.