Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI)

Business intelligence for those in the business of serving the poor

WHAT IS THE PPI? The Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI) is a poverty measurement tool for organizations and businesses with a mission to serve the poor. With the PPI, organizations can identify the clients, customers, or employees who are most likely to be poor or vulnerable to poverty and integrate objective poverty data into their assessments and strategic decision-making.

How many households below the poverty line does your organization serve?

HOW DOES THE Unlike other poverty measurement methods, the PPI was designed with the budgets and PPI WORK? operations of real organizations in mind; its simplicity means that it requires fewer resources to use. The PPI is a set of 10 easy-to-answer questions that a household member can answer in 5 to 10 minutes. A scoring system provides the likelihood that the survey respondents household is living below the national poverty line and internationally-recognized poverty lines. The PPI is country-specific. There are PPIs for 45 countries, and a similar poverty scorecard with a different creation methodology exists for use in China. All together, Grameen Foundation offers poverty measurement tools for the countries that are home to 90 percent of the people in the world who fall under $1.25/day 2005 PPP. WHY MEASURE POVERTY? Your organization may want to reach the poor, but without objective poverty data on the households you reach, social performance management will rely on assumptions. Organizations that collect poverty data from all or a statistically significant sample of house holds they reach are able to:

With these data, management staff can make informed strategic decisions and can provide stakeholders with objective evidence that the organization is reaching the poor and those vulnerable to poverty.

To learn more, visit www.progressoutofpoverty.org.