A Simple Poverty Scorecard for Bangladesh

 

Mark Schreiner

 

Center for Social Development, Washington University in Saint Louis

 

(February 2006)

How poor are participants in development projects in Bangladesh? Based on data from a national survey, this paper presents an easy-to-use, objective poverty scorecard that uses 10 simple indicators to estimate the likelihood that a participant has expenditure of less than $1/person/day. Field workers can compute scores by hand in real time. With 90-percent confidence, estimated poverty rates are correct within +/–1.5 percentage points. The low-tech scorecard can help programs target services, track changes in poverty over time, and report on poverty rates.

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