• Home
• Site Map
• Foreword
  • Foreword
  • Contributors & Copyright
• Introduction
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Sites
    • Why Pando and East Kalimantan?
    • Municipal Governments and Decentralisation in Bolivia
    • Municipal Governments and Decentralisation in Indonesia
• Part I. Concepts
  • Wellbeing and Poverty
    • Poverty is More Than Low Income
    • Poverty is a Lack of Wellbeing
    • Poverty and Wellbeing Have Many Dimensions
    • Further Reading
  • Local Governments and Poverty
    • How can Local Governments Reduce Poverty?
    • Four Steps to Improve Local Governmental Action
    • Further Reading
  • Forests and Poverty
    • How do Forests Influence Poverty?
    • What is Poverty in Forest Communities?
    • Are Forests Safety Nets, Poverty Traps or Escape Routes?
    • Further Reading
• Part II. Tools
  • Monitoring
    • What is monitoring?
    • Types of Monitoring
    • Indicators
    • When to monitor?
    • Who conducts monitoring?
    • Linking monitoring to planning
  • Participatory Planning
    • What is participatory planning?
    • Why is participatory planning useful?
    • When and where is participatory planning done?
    • Who should participate?
  • Tool 1: Interactive Mapping
    • What is interactive mapping?
    • Interactive mapping step-by-step
    • Use interactive mapping for monitoring
  • Tool 2: Wellbeing Monitoring
    • What is a local wellbeing monitoring system?
    • Wellbeing monitoring step-by-step
    • Step 1: Define purpose, develop plan and budget
    • Step 2: Develop local poverty indicators and formulate survey questions
    • Step 3: Design the sampling strategy
    • Step 4: Train staff and perform the survey
    • Step 5: Analyse and present the data
    • Step 6: Present findings
  • Tool 3: Community Evaluation
    • Evaluating local government programmes through community focus groups
    • Steps 1-3
    • Steps 4-6
    • Steps 7-8
    • Community evaluation step-by-step
  • Tool 4: Scenario-based Planning
    • What is scenario-based planning?
    • Scenario-based planning step-by-step
    • Visioning
    • Pathways
• Final Remarks
• Acknowledgements
• Additional Resources
• PDF Version

For many years, being poor was defined as not having enough money. Many countries continue to measure poverty only in terms of income, consumption or access to services. Even today, one of the most well-known poverty definitions is the poverty line of a minimum income of US$ 1 per day. The World Bank continues to use this standard for its global comparison of poverty.

Of course, money is important. It is used to pay for food, medicine and education. But money alone is not sufficient. Families could have enough income relatively, but lack access to healthcare, clean drinking water or formal education. In other cases, a family may have little cash income, but meet all of its subsistence needs. Does this automatically mean that the family is poor?

Since the mid-1980s, poverty concepts have changed from the simple consideration of income or consumption to definitions that include multiple dimensions of deprivation and wellbeing. Today, leading development organisations like the World Bank and UNDP apply poverty definitions that comprise aspects like basic needs, self-determined lifestyles, choice, assets, capabilities, social inclusion, inequality, human rights, entitlement, vulnerability, empowerment and subjective wellbeing.

© 2007 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
Contributors and copyright information