• Participatory wealth ranking

Participatory wealth ranking

This paper examines the current status of poverty in Nepal, and focuses on approaches to poverty and/or impact monitoring as well plans for PRSP monitoring. Through this review, the author typifies key characteristics of household surveys in Nepal such as:

• their not being designed for poverty monitoring
• the sequencing of surveys is not systematic
• the surveys are not comparable and there is limited validity at district level, with the emphasis on national, regional and ecological level.

The author argues that the most appropriate way to each the poor is through decentralised local participatory approaches to planning, implementation and monitoring policies and strategies.

The review finds that:

• within the current framework, the use of quantitative information generated at district and national level is hardly being used. Conversely, participatory approaches are relatively better in that they address the issue of implementation of policy responses as part of the monitoring process
• there is no shortage of data, it is the access to policymakers that is inadequate
• This review has also indicated that there is no dearth of data but it is the access to policy makers that is often inadequate. Hence the need for information dissemination to actual users, which needs to be built into the survey design

Summarily, the author reinforces the need to link information generated at the local, district and national levels. Ideally this would be through establishing a unified framework that would feed locally generated information from districts to the national system of well-being monitoring. [adapted from author]

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