ST/ESA/STAT/POVERTY/WWW
1 January 2006

Handbook on Poverty Statistics:
Concepts, Methods and Policy Use

Chapter 7.

Poverty Analysis for Policy Use: Poverty Profiles and Mapping

The main focus of this chapter is on the formulation of poverty reduction policies. The chapter shows how various poverty tools - poverty profiles and mapping - can be of considerable value to policy makers in strengthening the poverty alleviation impact of government spending. Poverty profiles play an important role in understanding poverty and formulating poverty reduction policies. In this context, this study provides some country specific examples to illustrate how poverty profiles can be constructed and how they can be utilized to design policies. Moreover, poverty mapping is another important tool used by many governments in order to target their basic services in education and health. This chapter provides a brief review of methodology used in the construction of poverty mapping, and also discusses the effectiveness and limitations of poverty mapping.

Chapter 7