Measuring poverty of microfinance clients in Haiti

Rob Fuller

(September 2006)

Fonkoze, a microfinance institution in Haiti, has used a poverty “scorecard” to benchmark existing client data to the $1-a-day extreme poverty line. By referring to data from a national survey of household income, 12 variables already routinely collected by Fonkoze were found to be suitable as indicators of whether a household is above or below the extreme poverty line. A scorecard was constructed, which allocates a number of points to each household depending on their responses to those 12 questions: this total score can then be translated into a probability that each household lies above or below the poverty line. This scorecard has already been used to analyse poverty rates of clients across several Fonkoze branches and credit cycles.