Working Paper
Reaching the Poor

Combining data from both, a nationwide standards of living survey (LSMS) and a national population and housing census, this paper generates a disaggregated map of poverty and living conditions in Mozambique. This analytical tool helps to overcome a problem very common until recently, namely that most nationwide studies of poverty were too general to support the design of policy interventions at the local level. In this paper, we disaggregate both expenditure and non-expenditure based indicators of poverty and well-being for the whole country. This paper also assesses geographic targeting schemes based on different ranking criteria. The analytical tool presented in this paper can be a useful contribution for the design of poverty alleviation strategies, by narrowing down the scope of action to the localities where the poor actually live.