Measuring Poverty Rapidly Using Within-Survey Imputations
Poverty is an indicator of paramount importance for gauging the socioeconomic well-being of a population. Especially during or after a shock, poverty estimates are invaluable for assessing the severity of the impact and for identifying which parts...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/900741611846381624/Measuring-Poverty-Rapidly-Using-Within-Survey-Imputations http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35103 |
| Summary: | Poverty is an indicator of paramount
importance for gauging the socioeconomic well-being of a
population. Especially during or after a shock, poverty
estimates are invaluable for assessing the severity of the
impact and for identifying which parts of the population
were most affected. The measurement of consumption-based
monetary poverty, however, has traditionally been very time
consuming. A household consumption questionnaire usually
includes more than 200 items, including food and nonfood
items, often requiring more than two hours to administer.
This paper proposes a new methodology that combines an
innovative questionnaire design with standard imputation
techniques. It substantially shortens the time required to
administer a household consumption questionnaire to less
than 60 minutes by imputing deliberately absent consumption
values for items that are not explicitly asked. The proposed
methodology makes it possible to derive poverty estimates
without compromising the credibility of the resulting
estimate, and it performs considerably better than
alternative approaches based on reduced consumption
aggregates and cross-survey imputations. This new
methodology is particularly useful in fragile states given
the significant risks associated with lengthy interviews, as
well as to rapidly assess the impact of a shock or of a
project. It can also be useful to reduce enumerator and
respondent fatigue, or to mitigate the problem of high
nonresponse rates. |
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