The World Bank’s internationally comparable poverty monitoring
database now draws on income or detailed consumption data
collected from interviews with 1.23 million randomly sampled
households through more than 850 household surveys collected
by national statistical offices in nearly 130 countries. Despite progress
in the last decade, the challenges of measuring poverty remain.
The timeliness, frequency, quality, and comparability of household
surveys need to increase substantially, particularly in the poorest
countries. The availability and quality of poverty monitoring data
remain low in small states, fragile situations, and low-income countries
and even some middle-income countries.
The low frequency and lack of comparability of the data available
in some countries create uncertainty over the magnitude of poverty
reduction. The table on trends in poverty indicators reports the
percentage of the regional and global population represented by
household survey samples collected during the reference year or
during the two preceding or two subsequent years (in other words,
within a five-year window centered on the reference year). Data coverage
in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa
remains low and variable. The need to improve household survey
programs for monitoring poverty is clearly urgent. But institutional,
political, and financial obstacles continue to limit data collection,
analysis, and public access.