A Simple Poverty Scorecard for the Philippines

How poor are participants of development projects in the Philippines? This paper uses the 2002 Annual Poverty Indicators Survey to construct an easy-to-use objective poverty scorecard that estimates the likelihood that a participant has income below the national poverty line. The scorecard uses 10 simple indicators that field workers can quickly collect and verify. Scores can be computed by hand on paper in real time. With 99 percent confidence, estimates of a group's overall poverty rate are accurate within +/-1.0 percentage point. The poverty scorecard can help development programs to target services to clients, track changes in poverty over time, and report on poverty rates.