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The Microfinance Poverty Assessment Tool was developed as a much-needed tool to increase transparency on the depth of outreach of microfinance institutions (MFIs). It is intended to assist donors and investors to integrate a poverty focus into their appraisals and funding of financial institutions through a more precise understanding of the clients served by these institutions. Used in conjunction with an institutional appraisal of financial sustainability, governance, management, staff and systems, a poverty assessment allows for a more holistic understanding of an MFI. The Microfinance Poverty Assessment Tool provides accurate data on the poverty levels of MFI clients relative to people living in the same community. It uses a more standardized, globally applicable, and rigorous set of indicators than those used by conventional microfinance targeting tools. The tool employs principal component analysis to construct a multidimensional poverty index that allows the poverty outreach of MFIs to be compared within and across countries. Originally field tested in four countries on three continents, it has subsequently been applied by microfinance donors and MFI networks in numerous other countries. Although the Microfinance Poverty Assessment Tool was designed for microfinance, the tool can also be used to measure the poverty levels of clients of other development programs. “The survey collects data on internationally standardized indicators, but is adapted–with the staff of MFI–to take into account the local context. The combination of international standardization (allowing for comparison), with local adaptations (allowing for appropriate and useful indicators), is key to the success of the tool.”.\"- Anton Simanowitz, Imp-Act ProgrammeInstitute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK

In 2021, China achieved an all-round victory in the fight against poverty and completed the task of eliminating absolute poverty. However, relative poverty will still exist for a long time. According to the degree of relative poverty, this paper divided rural population into four groups, incapability group, vulnerable group, marginal group and non-relative poverty group, to further explore the differences in specific land elements requirements among different groups. Firstly, ten factors were selected as evaluation indexes, including per capita household income, education level, poverty registration situation, employment situation, critical disease situation, natural disaster frequency situation, etc. By extracting 100 relative poverty group evaluation units as samples, the authors established a decision tree for rural relative poverty group evaluation based on an improved ID3 algorithm. Secondly, we quantified the effect of different land elements. Considering the resource, asset and capital function of land, this paper constructed an ordered logistic model with four groups as classification variables. The result showed that: (1) a better condition of land resource endowment leads to a lower degree of rural relative poverty; however, over-reliance on land increases the risk of relative poverty; (2) except for cultivation income and land transfer income, asset value and capital value of rural land are not evident. Suggestions are put forward: use land elements to build a long-term mechanism for rural relative poverty alleviation; improve the quantity, quality and spatial endowment of rural land resources; optimize the rural land property rights and land acquisition system; realize the market-based mechanism for rural land transfer; and implement the policy of Increase and Decrease Connection of Urban and Rural Construction Land.

The poor in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are in a worse predicament than their counterparts in other regions. The goal of this study was to establish the key drivers of poverty in SSA by looking at how economic variables affect growth and poverty. Data from ten SSA nations—upper-middle-income countries (UMIC), lower-middle-income countries (LMIC), and low-income countries (LIC)—were analyzed based on historical values from 2015 to 2019. From the six economic variables studied, the best model reveals that 78% of the differences in poverty can be accounted for using a methodical, statistical approach. Poverty and unemployment rates have a substantial positive relationship (p = 0.001662). The gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate and poverty have a slight link, which is significant at the 10% level (p = 0.067) but is not a significant contributor to poverty alleviation. The secondary school enrolment rate has no bearing on poverty variation (p = 0.33). Increased GDP does not necessarily correspond to poverty reduction. Unemployment, on the other hand, is a major contributor to poverty in the region. Moreover, education (secondary school ennoblement) plays a less important role in reducing poverty, whereas per capita personal consumer spending and GDP growth rate have a bigger impact on poverty reduction. The proposed theoretical and numerical model works on general indicators and trends; it does not guarantee that people in the UMIC, LMIC, and LIC countries may not fall below the international poverty line ($1.90 per day). The poverty rates are predicted to climb by more than 2% by 2030, postponing poverty elimination in the SSA region by almost five years. This signifies that more than half of the SSA population will remain poor.

Poverty is a large and growing problem in Africa resulting in an immense amount of avoidable suffering, foreshortened lives, frustrated potentials, and joyless existences. The poverty trap is more than just an economic phenomenon but a social phenomenon as well. African Poverty at the Millennium: Causes, Complexities, and Challenges is confined to the sub-Saharan region of Africa. The analysis found in Part I of this book, emphasizes the many-sided nature of poverty and the importance of going beyond generalizations about the poor. Part II looks at the various causes of poverty in Africa, stressing the powerful ill-effects of a combination of sluggish past economic growth and large, possibly widening, inequalities. It also draws attention to the strength of the social and political factors contributing to poverty. Part III outlines an anti-poverty strategy, highlighting the necessity for an inclusive and far-reaching approach, on the basis of joint action by concerned governments and donors. The poor in Africa are triply disadvantaged. Firstly, there is a widening international gap as African social indicators lag behind the rest of the world, partly as a result of poor growth. Secondly, by Africa's poor performance in turning income to social welfare. Thirdly, by national disparities in health and education between the poor and non-poor.

This is the final book in a three-part series entitled, \"Voices of the Poor.\" The series is based on an unprecedented effort to gather the views, experiences, and aspirations of more than 60,000 poor men and women from sixty countries. The work was undertaken for the \"World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty.\" This publication is organized as follows: Each country chapter opens up with a brief life story. These life stories were chosen because they highlight concerns raised not only by poor women and men living in that particular community, but because the same concerns were echoed in other parts of the country. The chapters then unfold around particular sets of issues that emerged repeatedly in group discussions and individual interviews. While the findings reported in the chapters cannot be generalized to represent poverty conditions for an entire nation, the chapters bring to life what it means to be poor in various communities, in fourteen countries, from the perspective of poor people. In the final chapter, four major patterns emerge: Poor people need a diverse set of assets and capabilities if they are to survive and overcome poverty. Economy-wide policies and shocks deplete poor people's assets and increase their insecurity. The culture of mediating institutions often negatively distorts the impact of well-intended policies and excludes the poor from gains. Gender inequity within households is persistent and children are acutely vulnerable.

Ongoing high conflict disputes between parents about the arrangements for children after parental separation are costly for parents and for the court system, and damaging to children. This study involved 80 parents (45 families) who attended a contact orders program following disputes over contact, mostly by court order; 20 parents participated in an in-depth interview. The key issue in the disputes for these parents was concern about the child's safety and well-being in the care of the other parent, with over half the children involved under the age of 5 at separation. A second issue was children's resistance to contact, especially on overnight stays and where the child was not close to that parent. Other issues such as the presence of new partners and disputes over money appear to have inflamed the dispute but were not the key reported reasons for the dispute.

Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) is an approach used increasingly by governments, civil society organizations, the World Bank, and other development partners to examine the distributional impacts of policy reforms on the well-being of different stakeholders groups, particularly the poor and vulnerable. PSIA has an important role in the elaboration and implementation of poverty reduction strategies in developing countries because it promotes evidence-based policy choices and fosters debate on policy reform options. This publication presents a collection of case studies that illustrate the spectrum of sectors and policy reforms to which PSIA can be applied; it also elaborates on the broad range of analytical tools and techniques that can be used for PSIA. The case studies provide examples of the impact that PSIA can have on the design of policy reforms and draw operational lessons for PSIA implementation. The case studies deal largely with policy reforms in a single sector, such as agriculture (crop marketing boards in Malawi and Tanzania and cotton privatization in Tajikistan); energy (mining sector in Romania and oil subsidies in Ghana); utilities (power sector reform in Ghana, Rwanda, and transition economies, and water sector reform in Albania); social sectors (education reform in Mozambique and social welfare reform in Sri Lanka); taxation reform (Nicaragua); as well as macroeconomic modeling (Burkina Faso).

China is undergoing a campaign which is called “The Targeted Poverty Alleviation Policy” to eradicate extreme poverty from rural China until 2020. Though poverty in rural China has been studied intensively in different objective dimensions, little attention has been paid to poverty line settings and subjective poverty, which are hinged to the policy effects. In order to fill in the research gap, this study employs a nationally representative survey of rural households in 2016, to measure subjective poverty in rural China, and analyze the determinants as well. Our results indicate that the mean subjective poverty line of the rural households is 8297 yuan per capita, which is far higher than the national poverty line (2800 yuan). Statistically, 29% of the surveyed rural households who are not objectively poor feel subjectively poor. The objective poverty line cannot fully reflect the subjective poverty perception. Thus, how to reduce the subjective poverty perception could be a major policy agenda in rural China after 2020, when extreme poverty is no longer a problem.

Data from China's Ministry of Civil Affairs show that more than 75% of the country's poor live in rural areas. Therefore, to achieve the goal of poverty alleviation by 2020, the problem of rural poverty requires urgent attention. Based on the entropy method, we herein assess the level of poverty vulnerability in each province in China to guide the direction of future poverty alleviation efforts. In addition, based on the logarithmic mean Divisia index method and the grey relational analysis method, we studied the effects and contributions of rural poverty incidence, rural agricultural outcomes per capita, the proportion of agricultural outcomes, gross domestic product per capita, and total population on rural poverty. We found that, when it comes to natural resources, human resources, physical assets, financial assets, and social resources, the most vulnerable areas are concentrated in western China. We suggest the government pay close attention to the interests of individuals in this region to balance economic development, distribute the benefits of economic development to the rural poor, and narrow the income gap between urban and rural areas.