Book Chapter
Producing an Improved Geographic Profile of Poverty

Methodology and Evidence from Three Developing Countries

This study implements a methodology for estimating poverty in Ecuador, Madagascar, and South Africa, at levels of disaggregation that to date have not generally been available. The methodology is based on a statistical procedure to combine household survey data with population census data, imputing into the latter, a measure of per capita consumption from the former. The countries have few similarities; yet, the study demonstrates that in all three, the poverty estimates produced from census data are both plausible and satisfactorily precise. The study illustrates how the resulting poverty estimates can be represented in maps, thereby conveying much information about the magnitude of poverty across localities, as well as the precision of estimates, in a way that can be readily absorbed by non‐technical audiences.