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POVERTY MAPPING - MALAWI
Results of the fourth iteration of the analysis
- February 2002
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Mr Charles Machinjili
Commissioner for Census and Statistics
National Statistics Office
PO Box 333, Zomba, Malawi
camachinjili@malawi.net
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Dr Todd Benson
Research Fellow
International Food Policy Research Institute
2033 k St. NW
Washington DC 20006 USA
t.benson@cgiar.org
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INTRODUCTION
Poverty mapping involves, first, discovering relationships between household characteristics and the welfare level of households as revealed by the analysis of a detailed living standards measurement survey (LSMS). Secondly, one then applies a model of these relationships to data on the same household characteristics contained in a national census in order to determine the welfare level of all households in the census. The resulting estimates of household welfare and poverty derived from the census are spatially disaggregated to a much higher degree than is possible using survey information, providing an enhanced understanding of the spatial dimensions of poverty.
In late 2000 the poverty analysis of the 1997-98 Integrated Household Survey (IHS) was completed, providing estimates of the incidence and severity of poverty in Malawi, together with a close analysis of how poverty is correlated with a range of household characteristics. The IHS is an LSMS type survey which was administered in all districts of the country over a twelve month period. It contains detailed consumption and expenditure information, as well as a wide range of other data on the surveyed households. It is a rich source, although it is limited to the extent that it is a sample, and can only provide estimates of poverty at the level of the district and above.
In September 1998, during the period the HIS was being administered, the decennial Malawi Population and Housing Census was carried out. Administered to all households in the nation, the census necessarily must be standardised, simple, and easy to administer. It is universal in coverage, but the information collected is limited.
Poverty mapping takes advantage of the poverty analysis and the wealth of detail in the household survey and the universal coverage of the census. A model of household welfare is developed using the household survey data. The dependent (left-hand side) variable is the natural log of the household welfare indicator - daily per capita consumption and expenditure of household in Malawi Kwacha - developed in the poverty analysis of the IHS. The independent variables for the model are those household characteristic variables which are found in both the household survey and the census. Once a suitable model is developed using the household survey, that model is then applied to the census data in order to generate a household welfare indicator for each household in the census. Having calculated the level of welfare of census households, poverty levels in villages and communities can then be determined.
url: http://www.malawiagri.org/reports/results4thpovmap.pdf
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