Poverty reduction is the worthy goal of many development and social programs. On the surface, the exercise seems straightforward enough. Find people who are poor and develop a program that empowers them to seize and sustain new economic opportunities. Needless to say, program design and implementation can be tricky, complicated work that requires much trial and error, but the challenge of fighting poverty starts much earlier.
Turns out it is often not that easy to determine who is poor and best-served by specific programs in the first place.
The Progress Out of Poverty Index (PPI) was developed to address these issues by providing objective measures of poverty that are tailored to the living circumstances of 46 specific countries.
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