Poverty Scorecards for Bangladesh, Haiti, India, Mexico, Pakistan, and the Philippines
This presentation guides MFI managers in the construction and use of poverty scorecards that measure clients poverty status. It presents simple Poverty Progress Indices (PPIs) for Bangladesh, Haiti, India, Mexico, Pakistan, and the Philippines. Poverty scorecards need to be objective, accurate, practical and applicable. Managers can use scores to target services, report poverty rates and track changes in poverty over time. Key points from the presentation include:
- Practicality matters more than accuracy;
- Managers should keep in mind the principle of KISS (Keep Scoring Simple);
- Indicators should be practical, objective and liable to change over time;
- Indicators should exclude expenditure amount, asset value, ratios, squares, interactions, and logarithms;
- Advantages of PPIs are that programs can download scorecards and use them and field workers can compute scores on paper, in field, in real time with no need for software.
The presentation provides guidelines for the day-to-day use of PPIs and for setting cut-offs for targeting. It states that programs set their own policy cut-offs based on their mission and values and benefits or costs of classification outcomes. It concludes with a description of Grameen Foundation, USA's PPIs.
