Resource information
Small area estimates of poverty have
become useful tool in targeting poverty reduction by
geographic areas. For Nepal, this is the second poverty map
produced after a gap of seven years in collaboration with
the Central Bureau of statistics, Nepal. This report
presents 2010/11 small-area estimates and maps for Nepal at
the 75 district, 967 ilaka and 2344 'target area'
level, of poverty incidence, poverty gap, and poverty
severity. The report also provides maps of the number of
poor and their average consumption. As the newly introduced
target areas are generally smaller than conventional
aggregation levels, special attention is devoted to
investigating the precision of the point estimates and to
interpretation of the results. The poverty maps could
usefully be expanded to other indicators of welfare such as
nutrition and food security like in 2006. Detailed spatial
distribution of poverty offers an opportunity to explore
further the causes of poverty trends in Nepal. When combined
with the spatial distribution of correlates of poverty such
as access to roads, schools and health facilities, and other
variable of economic geography, one can further our
understanding of the persistence of pockets of poverty in
Nepal. The present report updates the 2006 results for Nepal
in three ways. First, it uses the recently published 2010/11
round of the Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS) and 2011
population census in order to produce an updated description
of the spatial patterns of poverty. Second, it incorporates
new methodological refinements aimed at improving modeling
of the standard error. Third, in an effort to improve
practical usability of the results, estimates are produced
at the sub-ilaka or Village Development Committees (VDC)
level - where possible-instead of sticking with the ilaka
level that was used in 2006.
