A five-day seminar on advanced poverty measurement and analysis took place at the Four Points by Sheraton Dar es Salaam New Africa Hotel from June 10-14, 2024. The event was targeted at researchers, analysts, and advisors to policymakers, with a specific focus on poverty estimates, comparisons, and policies. The course required participants to have a background in economics and statistics, as well as proficiency in using the statistical software Stata.
The seminar was designed to enhance the understanding of poverty measurement as reported by the World Bank, including country-level poverty assessments and global poverty estimates based on the international poverty line, which informs target 1.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals. The curriculum was divided into three main sections:
1. Measuring Individual Wellbeing:
- Focused on estimating consumption, including the measurement of food consumption and the impact of questionnaire design on consumption estimates.
- Covered nonfood consumption estimation and its growing importance as countries' economies develop.
- Addressed the challenges of adjusting for price differences across time and regions, and allocating household-level consumption measures to individuals.
2. Constructing Poverty Lines:
- Explored methods for constructing cost-of-basic-needs poverty lines using examples from various countries.
- Discussed the variation in what constitutes basic needs across different nations.
- Examined the derivation of international poverty lines used by the World Bank.
3. Estimating Poverty and Inequality:
- Provided practical training on testing for differences in poverty estimates, such as comparing rural and urban poverty.
- Discussed maintaining comparability of poverty estimates over time and across different regions.
Learning Objectives
The seminar aimed to enhance critical thinking regarding reported poverty measures, their policy implications, and their limitations. Specific objectives included:
- Testing for differences in poverty rates across regions.
- Understanding the effects of oversampling on sample weights and population inferences.
- Recognizing when sample design affects the precision of estimates.
- Accessing national, regional, and global poverty estimates using online tools.
Each day of the seminar combined theoretical discussions with practical examples, drawing on country data, research papers, and World Bank reports. This approach helped participants understand the sensitivity of poverty measures to changes in methods and assumptions, as well as practical challenges in data collection and analysis.
Course Development and Support
The seminar was developed by Dean Jolliffe and Samuel Tetteh Baah, with contributions from Christoph Lakner, Nishant Yonzan, Daniel Mahler, Andres Castaneda Aguilar, Martha Viveros, Zander Prinsloo, Peter Lanjouw, Martin Ravallion, and Sergio Olivieri. It was part of the C4D2 Training Initiative, supported by the UK government's DEEP Research Programme.
Participants left the seminar equipped with advanced skills in poverty measurement and analysis, prepared to apply these techniques in their respective fields to better inform policy and address poverty challenges.