quick poverty assessment tools

[Judith D'Souza]

Dear community members

I will be going on a project design mission where I will need to do quick assessments of poverty levels in many villages with groups. Though good poverty assessments take time, I need some ideas for quick time-efficient ways to do participatory assessments. Would love to hear from any one if they have any ideas.

Thanks

Judith

 

[Bhabatosh Nath]

Hi Judith,

Thanks to share your ideas for "Quick assessment of poverty".

First of all, I think to assess the 'Poverty' level, it should not be limited with 'time', and so, why we think of doing this promising job so 'Quickly'! However, as the other members have expressed, I am fully agree that you can do it through participatory approach. Go to the people at grassroots level: in remote rural areas, city slum areas, river-eroded areas, sandbar areas etc. who are excluded from the mainstreaming development programmes of the government and of the NGOs as well. You could check with the village /urban groups formed by Micro Finance Institutes (MFIs) /NGOs, ask the group members who are excluded from their group and have no access to credit from the MFIs/NGOs. I think you can identify the real down-trodden poor people in this process. For example, one of my recent experience to identify 'poor people', a woman in sandbar area (in Bangla usually we call it 'Char', which is isolated from the main land area- surrounded by rivers, and in almost every year people have to move from one area to other area due to frequent river erosion) just ask me "Come to 'Char' area and find out who are the real 'poor people like us". 

Warm regards,

Bhabatosh 

[Kaveri Ishwar Haritas]

Hi Judith, 

In my research the focus was not on poverty but I still needed to understand how to place people on the poverty scale. I conducted qualitative open ended interviews and in the beginning collected information on income (of all members of the household), employment, expenditure on health and schooling. I cross tabulated this with my observation on type of housing (Kaccha/Pucca/ subsidised housing) and also on whether they lived in rented or owned subsidised housing. Based on the information, I was able to discern those who were very poor and those who were relatively better off and those on their way to getting out of the slum/resettlement area. This required very little time and allowed me to focus on the main topic of my interviews which was mobilisation. But this is in the context of qualitative ethnographic research.. dont know if it helps.. 

Kaveri

[Rituu B Nanda]

Thanks for responding to this discuss. I was wondering what was the response of the people during FGDs when you asked about their income? I would like to learn from you the kind of questions you asked. Thanks.

Kaveri Ishwar Haritas said:

Hi Judith, 

In my research the focus was not on poverty but I still needed to understand how to place people on the poverty scale. I conducted qualitative open ended interviews and in the beginning collected information on income (of all members of the household), employment, expenditure on health and schooling. I cross tabulated this with my observation on type of housing (Kaccha/Pucca/ subsidised housing) and also on whether they lived in rented or owned subsidised housing. Based on the information, I was able to discern those who were very poor and those who were relatively better off and those on their way to getting out of the slum/resettlement area. This required very little time and allowed me to focus on the main topic of my interviews which was mobilisation. But this is in the context of qualitative ethnographic research.. dont know if it helps.. 

Kaveri

[Joseph Robert BUGEMBE]

Judith, for me a good poverty assessment should be able and willing to deal with making measurement of the complexities of poverty (i.e. the multiple dimensions to it, the dynamic nature of the needs and its local specificity). If we assume that your (research) effort is not merely basic and/or academic, but one that is action oriented, then what we are expecting are findings that will inform poverty targeted actions/interventions/responses. To do the latter, a good measure of serious poverty mapping, characterization and specification needs to be done so as to inform robust responses against poverty...    

[Kaveri Ishwar Haritas]

I interviewed women in my project and started by asking how long they lived in the area, where did they live before shifting there, their names, age, family members - how many children, do they go to school, which school etc and then asked them about the work they do and then went into income. My questions were: 

Do you work? If so where? Are you able to manage your household expenses? - most of the respondents volunteer income information at this point to which I probed by asking about other family member's contributions to the household income. At this point you have to be careful to make a distinction between what they earn and what they contribute to the household- this distinction is very important for men's income because men tend to earn much more than they contribute to the home. In my work men gave 50% of lesser of their income using the remaining for their 'expenses' - cigarettes, alcohol and eating out. Also make a distinction between income for running the household and income spent on medical expenses, coz this means there is lesser to go around. 

[Pramod Sharma]

Assessment of Income and poverty is very confusing, In villages people say they are well off, when they talk of marriage etc and situation reverse when they ask for BPL card from government.(These are old stories).

 Some times it is good to use villager's mind  for example,  if we ask villagers in different groups about  5 poorest families of village according to them? why they considered them as poor ? and what help they do to these families?  Even then, hh survey is important because income and debt related questions are very personal.