POVERTY: Multifaceted assessment

Poverty is multifaceted and highly complex. In most situations, poverty is best reduced by helping people help themselves – on their terms. Information is needed to understand how. In order to effectively address poverty, governments, donor agencies and others must understand the principal underlying causes involved (at multiple scales) if they are to arrive at some approximation of the constraints poor people face. Such an understanding is required if one is to responsibly design and apply relevant, beneficial interventions with the goal of reducing poverty in a given region and enabling residents to pursue meaningful and rewarding lives and livelihoods. Income (or economic growth) does not provide a reliable proxy measure of poverty. Multidimensional Executive summary measurement is a more responsible and reliable alternative in most contexts. As such, MPAT strives to capture those domains that are, arguably, fundamental to human well-being and, by extension, to poverty reduction, in a 21st century rural context. This is done by using survey questions that are broad enough to be applicable in most rural contexts, but precise enough to act as quality proxy
measures for the components they represent. Regardless of the type of intervention, in order to help themselves, people’s most fundamental needs must first be met before they can effectively address more long-term goals. So too, in most rural contexts today, dimensions beyond fundamental human (physiological) needs often constrain rural people’s ability to help themselves. Agriculture, for example, although no longer as central to rural livelihoods as it once was, remains paramount for most poor rural people. Farming systems are increasingly complemented with other livelihood opportunities and inputs, which should likewise be addressed, in addition to a range of potential shocks people must cope with and recover from – not just natural shocks, but socio-economic shocks as well. All of these dimensions can be further examined through a lens of equality, both gender equality and social equality, since many people
(particularly minority groups) are excluded from the benefits that an enabling environment may offer others. MPAT provides a mechanism for examining these dimensions.
MPAT’s data are collected through surveys and then organized via indicators since this method provides a standardized means of collecting and analysing qualitative and quantitative data. However, one must be cautious when using indicators since there is a temptation to tout numbers as truths, rather than acknowledge the sometimes questionable reflections of reality that they are. More generally, it should also be noted that, with respect to detailed, context-specific poverty assessment, participatory approaches are arguably
the best option for attaining a thorough understanding of poverty characteristics in an area. To be sure, this is the preferable methodology in many situations; but if the goal is to obtain a thorough overview of key sectors and make spatial and temporal comparisons, then there is a need for standardization, which is especially difficult to achieve when using relatively open-ended participatory approaches.
http://web.ifad.org/mpat/resources/book.pdf