The adoption of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper approach and of the Millennium Development Goals has led to an increased need for more systematic Poverty and Social Impact Analysis of the impact of policy reforms on the well-being or welfare of different stakeholder groups, with particular focus on the poor and vulnerable. The User’s Guide and Good Practice Note are parts of a comprehensive response undertaken by the World Bank to address this need.
The User’s Guide intends to provide guidance to practitioners undertaking PSIA in developing countries. Given the broad scope of policy issues, methods, and challenges involved, the User’s Guide does not specify minimum standards for PSIA, but rather provides suggestions on how to approach the analysis. In advocating a multidisciplinary approach to PSIA, the User’s Guide presents both economic and social analysis tools and methods, including methods to analyze the sustainability and risks to policy reform that come with the poverty and social impacts of policy changes. The User’s Guide is organized as follows. Following an Introduction, Chapter 2 introduces the main concepts underlying PSIA and establishes the conceptual framework. Chapter 3 presents an approach to PSIA by reviewing 10 basic elements underlying the sound analysis of the poverty and social impacts of reforms. Chapter 4 considers some of the major challenges often identified by PSIA practitioners, especially in developing countries, and provides basic operational principles for PSIA. Chapter 5 proposes a summary matrix that can be a useful tool to capture and integrate the various elements of good PSIA. Chapter 6 closes with brief conclusions. The PSIA Good Practice Note (GPN) provides advice to World Bank task teams on when, why and how to conduct Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) as part of preparing a Development Policy Operation (DPO). The GPN, initially drafted in 2004 and updated in 2008, incorporates the lessons from PSIA implementation over the last three years across the world. Hence, it adds the important dimension of lessons learned from practical experiences with PSIA to the guidance provided in the User’s Guide. The GPN is organized as follows. It begins with presenting an overview of how PSIA can be integrated into country work (section II) and provides guidance on selecting priority reforms for PSIA and determining if new analysis is necessary (section III). Options for the design and implementation of the analytical work are discussed (section IV) as well as good practices to inform policy dialogue and operational design (section V), with details on the Program Document and the Bank’s disclosure policy. The Annex provides supplementary PSIA resources, including a checklist of key questions that can be addressed by PSIA, and a list of additional PSIA publications and websites. Conducting PSIA: Back to Poverty and Social Impact Analysis |
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