Towards a Targeted Response for Poverty Alleviation

Background• Develop Poverty Maps to improve delivery of assistance

programs• Poverty Maps allows us to identify concentrations of

Poverty at a lower geographical level• Current challenge for Poverty Alleviation programs is the

lack of small area level information to ensure that intervention programs reach the right recipients.

• Time frame – August 2010 to April 2011

Incidence of Poverty (by Division/area)

Area Division 2002 2008

Rural Central 29 36

  Eastern 35 40

  Northern 57 51

  Western 38 43

Rural All   40 43

Urban Central 24 16

  Eastern 42 30

  Northern 39 38

  Western 33 17

Urban All   28 19

FIJI   35 31

Towards a Targeted Response for Poverty Alleviation

Current Challenges Using the Western Division as an example

• The Western Division has a population of 320,000 living in 69,000 households. There are 3 provinces and 7 urban centers.• Poverty estimates are available only for Western Urban and Western Rural, clearly insufficient for a wide geographical region.• Poverty Alleviation programs require information at a lower geographical level

Western Division

-Population 320,000-3 Provinces-7 Urban Centers-2 Incidence of Poverty Estimates i.e. Western Urban (17%) and Western Rural (43%

Towards a Targeted Response for Poverty Alleviation

• The Poverty mapping exercise will provide information for at least 500 small area geographical units

• Around $1.5b for Poverty Alleviation program in the last 10 years

• The latest Poverty Findings indicate that the Western Rural and Urban are to be allocated 33% and 8% of Poverty Alleviation Resources, respectively.

Western Division EA Boundaries

500 Enumeration Areas500 Poverty Incidence Estimates

Towards a Targeted Response for Poverty Alleviation

• We also attempted to gather GPS Waypoints for each household in the 2007 Population Census

• We have completed about 85% of the work• The GPS Waypoints will enhance the usefulness of the

census data• We will need to figure out whether GPS information

could be useful in providing poverty rates at a lower level of geography then the Enumeration Area

GPS Waypoints

VITILEVU - GPS

Households with GPS Locations

Action Plan

• Main data sources confirmed i.e. 2007 Population and Housing Census and 2008-09 HIES

• Common variables have been identified.

• Data is being checked, verified and cleaned.

• Check on other relevant data i.e. those that may help explain differences in poverty between locations

Action Plan

• Identify other data sources: location-specific infrastructure, roads, agriculture and hotels.

• Identify how to merge those data onto HIES and Census (identifiers? Name?)

• Do clusters match with Census Enumeration Areas (EAs)?

Action Plan

• Model Welfare using survey sample

• Merge location-specific information onto survey

• Identify model that predicts welfare (poverty) “fairly well”

• Compute and save model coefficients

Action Plan

• Bring Model Results to Census

• Compute poverty (and inequality) estimates

• Produce “the map”

External Stakeholders

• Poverty Eradication Unit of the Prime Minister’s Office.

• Ministry of Social Welfare

• Other Government Ministries, Donors, NGOs and institutions involved in Poverty Alleviation Programs

VINAKA VAKALEVU