Poverty Measurement Methodology in the Maldives : Technical Report

The Maldives national bureau of statistics (NBS) undertook a household income and expenditure survey (HIES) in 2016. The latest round of HIES in the Maldives (with other rounds conducted in 2003 and 2009-10) was undertaken by NBS with a completely revised survey and questionnaire design which includes important survey improvements to bring the HIES up to international standards, particularly in the measurement of poverty, but also hinders comparability with past survey years. The analysis was undertaken in various steps which included the processing of the raw dataset and data validation. This document focuses on the detailed description of the methodology in the Maldives which was applied to derive poverty estimates, including a discussion on data challenges. In particular, this document is organized as follows: section one gives introduction. Section two describes the processing of raw datasets and data validation. Section three displays the four components of the nominal consumption aggregate - expenditure on food, non-food non-durables, consumer flows from durable goods, and rent. Section four discusses temporal and spatial adjustments to construct a real consumption aggregate and section five provides an overview of data challenges. Section six discusses the construction of relative poverty lines and section seven concludes.