Targeting the Poor in Vietnam using a Small Area Estimation Method

To estimate the poverty rate at the commune level, the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs firstly collects information on households’ income per capita, and compares their income with a defined poverty line. A household is identified as a poor one if their income per capita is below the poverty line. Then, the poverty rate of a commune is simply the ratio of the defined poor households in that commune. This method can raise questions about the quality of the collected data on income. This paper examines the quality of expenditure data collected in this simple way. It is found that the expenditure data collected in the simple way are considerably lower than expenditure data collected using detailed questionnaires. Thus collection of expenditure or income data using simple questionnaires tends to underestimate the actual expenditure or income. For poverty targeting in small areas such as communes or districts, this paper suggests the application of this small areas estimation method.