Measuring poverty at project level: An assessment of the performance of the Simple Poverty Scorecard

Improving the effectiveness, efficiency and monitoring of rural poverty reduction interventions requires measuring poverty for rural areas at subnational level and for specific populations subgroups such as those engaged in primary activities. However, public national household surveys, which are the best sources of poverty data, do not allow direct estimation of poverty in specific target areas or populations. In certain cases, sophisticated econometric techniques can overcome this obstacle, but it can be challenging for development practitioners to implement them. The Simple Poverty Scorecard method, based on 10-questions surveys, is a more practical and popular alternative to estimate poverty at the project level. In this webinar, Emmanuel Skoufias will discuss the Simple Poverty Scorecard method based on a recent study that assessed its performance using surveys from nine countries over a 10-year period. The webinar tackles the advantages and disadvantages of the Simple Poverty Scorecard method.

SPEAKER:

Emmanuel Skoufias is a Lead Economist at the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank. He specializes in impact evaluation, targeting, poverty measurement, urban and rural labor markets, land tenancy issues, and the role of risk mitigation and insurance in poverty alleviation. Prior to joining the World Bank, Dr. Skoufias worked at the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and in academia (Economics Institute, and Penn State University). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota and a B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Webcast