Plan de Gestión de Convivencia Escolar

There have been a variety of attempts to devise a method of poverty assessment that treats poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon rather than simply a measurement of inadequate income or expenditures (Osmani 2003). Nonetheless, it is clear that poverty assessment faces both methodological and conceptual challenges (Ravallion 1992). Zeller et al. (2001) mention three general approaches for assessing poverty. First, they describe the “construction of a poverty line and computation of various measures that take into account the way in which household expenditures fall short of the poverty line” (ibid. p. 3). In this approach the total household expenditures are used to evaluate a household or individual’s living standard. The question is whether the household income is sufficient to meet basic needs. This “basket of foods and services corresponding with the local consumption pattern and satisfying a pre-set level of basic needs for one person is constructed and ranked at local consumer prices to compute its minimum costs” (Zeller et al. 2001, p. 3-4). The value of this basket represents the poverty line, generally given as a daily per capita expenditure. This method of poverty assessment is widely used by national governments. According to Zeller et al. (2001), the disadvantages of this method are the large data requirements, problems related to the recall method for food and non-food expenditures, and problems related to the verifiability of the expenditure data. Moreover, the analysis of expenditure data requires advanced skills in statistics. The Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS) of the World Bank is a widely recognized example of this kind of assessment. LSMS’s are large-scale surveys which aim to satisfy the data requirements of decision makers as well as monitor and evaluate the impact of development policies. The LSMS contains

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four multidisciplinary questionnaires that each cover different aspects of well-being. The data gathered gives a general picture of the household situation and behavior, allowing for the household living standard to be monitored and evaluated (Lariviére et al. 1998, Grosh and Glewwe 2002, Deaton 1997). When income and expenditure are measured directly through detailed social-economic surveys, as in the LSMS, one can speak of sophisticated means tests used in targeting poverty reduction programs (Johannsen 2009).

Additional approaches to poverty assessment described by Zeller et al. (2001) include the Rapid Appraisal (RA) and the Participatory Appraisal (PA) methods, both of which use input from community members. RA and PA are subjective approaches to measuring relative poverty which ask people to rank their status in relation to other community members. Both appraisals use techniques like ‘wealth ranking’ (see for example Feulefack et al. 2006) and ‘community mapping’. While the object of the PA is to empower a targeted group, the RA seeks to provide data about a community in a relatively short period of time. Both approaches require participation from community members, but each has different time requirements. The Participatory Appraisal as well as the Rapid Appraisal have a high value for the identification of vulnerable groups within a community. For a general poverty assessment for a region, a nation or for international comparison these approaches are not applicable due to the difficulty of verifying the subjective rating of community members on this kind of scale and the complications presented by the need for skilled communicators to conduct the surveys. Furthermore, these relative assessments are not suitable for comparative studies because wealth levels in different societies are not comparable.

A third type of poverty assessment discussed by Zeller et al. (2001) is “the construction of a poverty index using a range of qualitative and quantitative indicators” (p. 3). Credible information can be obtained quickly and inexpensively with a tool of this type that uses indicators to describe different dimensions of poverty. The Human Development Index (HDI) and the Housing Index are two commonly used examples of such indicator-based poverty assessments. In the latter, indicators like ‘condition of roof’ are compiled and analyzed; with one possible criticism being that only one dimension of poverty is captured. Perhaps the most notable problem in using indicator based tools is the arbitrariness of the weighting of different indicators.

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The CGAP’s micro finance poverty assessment tool (see Henry et al. 2003) is also of the indicator based type. This tool, developed by Zeller et al. (2001; 2006) at the International Food Policy Institute (IFPRI) in cooperation with the CGAP, assesses relative poverty using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for the selection of indicators. This methodology is designed to avoid the arbitrary selection of indicators and their corresponding weights. Chapter 5 contains an analysis based on this CGAP poverty assessment tool. It is also pertinent to note that the later discussed ‘operational tools for poverty assessment’ refer to the indicator based approach to poverty assessment.

Often poverty profiles are used to present the data gathered in a poverty assessment study. According to Ravallion and Badani (1994, p.75) “a poverty profile shows how a measure of poverty varies across subgroups of a population, such as region of residence or sector of employment.” Poverty profiles are often used to compare socioeconomic subgroups within a given country or region in terms of the incidence, distribution, and extent of monetary poverty. The main objective in drawing a poverty profile is to give a descriptive analysis of the data gathered (Johannsen 2009).