Targeting and reaching the poor

   
While a broader work program on targeting and reaching the poor is under development, DDVE’s current work in this area focuses on poverty mapping and geographic information systems. The context for this work is that there are often large regional differences in poverty and other social indicators within a country. But geographic poverty and other profiles based on household surveys tend to be limited to broad areas because survey sample sizes are too small to permit analysts to construct valid estimates of poverty at the local level. At the same time policymakers often need finely disaggregated information at the neighborhood, town, or even village level in order to implement anti-poverty programs. For example, telling a Ghanaian policy maker that the Savannah region has high rates of poverty would not be too impressive as that information is already well known; telling the policy maker which villages or towns have the highest poverty measures would be more convincing, and more useful as well. In addition to being useful to governments, poverty and MDG maps can also be useful for NGOs and faith-based organizations (FBOs) to help them target their own programs in areas where needs are highest.

Building on previous work started in the Africa Region at the World Bank, DDVE is managing a Poverty Mapping and Geographic Information Systems Initiative that is active in 16 African countries, with a possibility of expansion for selected work in other countries. The countries participating in the project are: Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. Beyond finalizing the poverty maps for these countries, the DDVE team is now using the map for policy applications.

• Poverty mapping techniques are used to assess the geographic impacts of the price shock in several countries. The results suggest that the poverty impacts of the higher food prices vary considerably within countries. This poses a difficult ethical dilemma in focusing policy responses, since the hardest-hit areas in a country often are not the poorest. See for example DDVE Working Paper 2008-3 on Guinea.  
    
• Poverty maps are being used to help assess the targeting performance of social programs. One example is work on Sierra Leone, where the poverty map and other census-based information is being used to assess the targeting of the investments carried under the large National Social Action Project, and to help decision-making regarding the location of new feeder roads and basic social services. 
    
• Poverty mapping techniques can also be used to assess poverty and well-being levels among small population groups for which household surveys typically do not have sufficient sample sizes for analysis. DDVE is using the census data to document the living conditions (including outcomes related to education and employment) for handicapped people in West Africa. 
    
• DDVE is also conducting work on assessing whether large household surveys without data on consumption or income can be used to produce poverty maps, in order to update poverty maps in the absence of recent census data. Work in this area is proceeding on Ghana and Nigeria.