The Basic Necessities Survey : The Experience of ActionAid Vietnam Monitoring

This paper reports on the use of a new method for the measurement of poverty, based on an adaptation of a survey based approach used in Britain in the 1980's. The method has a number of advantages. It is open to a broad definition of poverty and sensitive to changing definitions of poverty over time. The process is participative but produces quantifiable results. The analysis of data collected does not require highly specialised statistical skill. The results can be publicly presented in a way that is easily understood. The paper has three sections. Part 1 describes the use of the method by ActionAid Vietnam in late 1997. This includes an account of the project context, the rationale for the use of the method, an explanation of the method itself, and an initial analysis of the results. Part 2 briefly documents and comments on some peer responses to the method, by participants in a recent meeting of the Development Studies “NGOs and Poverty” study group. Part 3 places the method in the context of recent related research. Other variations of the method used in Europe in the 1980's and 1990’s are referred to, as well as some of the criticisms that have been made of this type of method. Finally, in Part 4 the method is reviewed in the light of some criteria of appropriate methods of poverty measurement, as proposed in a workshop by the ODI in 1997. PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory Pro trial version http://www.pdffactory.com