Project Overview
UN Steering Committee on Poverty Statistics
  Activities and Meetings
  Outline of the Handbook as of October 2003
  Outline of the Handbook as of July 2004
Instructions on the Format of Manuscripts
   
  Chapter 1. Preface and introduction
Chapter 2. Overview of concepts and fundamentals of poverty measurements
  Chapter 3. Practices of poverty measurements
  Chapter 4. Statistical tools and estimation methods for poverty measures based on household surveys
  Chapter 5. Statistical issues in measuring poverty from non-survey sources
  Chapter 6. Poverty analysis for national policy use: poverty profiles, mapping and dynamics
  Chapter 7. Conclusions and recommendations
  Addendum
 
 
 

ST/ESA/STAT/POVERTY/WWW
21 July 2004

Handbook on Poverty Statistics:
Concepts, Methods and Policy Use

Chapter 3. Practices of poverty measurements

To review past and present practices of poverty measurement, highlighting the progressive broadening of the definition and measurement of poverty - from command over income to other dimensions of well being (e.g. longevity, education, health) and more recently, to risk, vulnerability, powerlessness and lack of voice; to pay attention to the rapid changing international and global context and its effect on poverty measurement.

Based in part on the experiences accumulated by the Rio Group and four regional workshops organized in connection with the project: to discuss the data availability and quality of existing poverty statistics (e.g. at national and sub-national and global levels, disaggregated by gender); to review country practices including methodologies/concepts, data collection tools, the regularity and disaggregation of the estimates; to understand the difficulties/barriers (institutional/technical/financial) countries face and what is needed to respond to the growing demand for adequate and timely data to guide the design of policies aimed at reducing poverty and for monitoring purpose. Attention will be given to the interplay between national and international stakeholders in providing poverty data for HDR, PRSP, CCA and the MDGR.