Microfinance Initiatives: PAT

USAID Poverty Assessment Tool (PAT)

The USAID Poverty Assessment Tool is a set of country-specific surveys--developed under contract with the IRIS Center at the University of Maryland--to predict the prevalence of extreme poverty within a group of people (the percentage of respondents that are "very poor" or "not very poor"). A household is considered to be very poor if it is among the bottom 50% of those below a country's national poverty line, or if its per capita consumption falls below the international extreme poverty line of $1 a day (adjusted for purchasing power parity, PPP). The surveys include between 16 to 33 poverty questions derived from national household surveys. The tools make poverty calculations based on an aggregate group of people but are less accurate (and not explicitly designed) for measuring poverty on an individual basis.

The data gathered through the PAT surveys is used to automatically estimate the share of households living below the applicable poverty line. Each tool can be administered in ten to twenty minutes.

The PAT is applied once the person becomes a client of the microenterprise program and then only on an aggregate basis in order to balance potential errors and increase accuracy.

For more information, go to www.povertytools.org or contact Anthony Leegwater at aleegwater@iris.econ.umd.edu or Brian Beard at bbeard@iris.econ.umd.edu.