Paper

Developing and Testing Poverty Assessment Tools: Results From Accuracy Tests in Bangladesh

Testing poverty assessment tools
Download 81 pages

The purpose of this report is to present the results of the accuracy tests in Bangladesh. The report provides an overview of:

  • The design of the field research for the accuracy test;
  • The computation of the applicable poverty line;
  • The analysis of the research;
  • Results on selected poverty indicators from 9 regression models;
  • Two other poverty assessment methods namely, loan size and Participatory Wealth Ranking (PWR).

The authors conclude that:

  • The nine models show quite satisfactory levels of overall accuracy;
  • Accuracies in prediction are systematically higher among the very poor compared to the not very poor;
  • All models have especially high inaccuracies of prediction for households that fall just below or above the poverty line;
  • In larger geographical areas, PWR achieves a fairly low accuracy rate;
  • Loan size is a very practical and a relatively low cost tool for micro finance institutions and compares favourably to PWR.

The authors recommend:

  • Introduction of a confidence interval defined by a certain X percent below and above the poverty line.
  • Differentiating the subjective scales, on which the practitioners participating rate indicators from 1 to 5, into difficulty of obtaining and of verifying the information.

About this Publication

By Zeller, M., Alcarez, G., Johannsen, J.
Published