Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) is the analysis of the distributional impact of policy reforms on the well-being or welfare of different stakeholder groups, with particular focus on the poor and vulnerable. PSIA has an important role in the elaboration and implementation of poverty reduction strategies in developing countries. It promotes evidence-based policy choices and fosters debate on policy reform options. PSIA helps to:

• Analyze the link between policy reforms and their poverty and social impacts
• Consider trade-offs among reforms on the basis of their distributional impacts
• Enhance the positive impacts of reforms and minimize their adverse impacts
• Design mitigating measures and risk management systems
• Assess policy reform risks
• Build country ownership and capacity for analysis

PSIA is a systematic analytic approach, not a separate product. It starts with the ex-ante analysis of expected poverty and social impacts of policy reforms, with a view to helping to design the reforms. PSIA then advocates monitoring results during implementation. Finally, where possible, PSIA suggests evaluating ex-post the poverty and social impacts of reforms.

This website was conceived as a forum for interaction and a tool for disseminating experience. We invite you to send material, links, references and suggestions to psia@worldbank.org. The site will be updated as we gain experience.