Poverty Measurement Report: Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI)

This paper describes Microfinance Organizations Network of Pakistan’s (MON-PAK) Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI) pilot that aimed to institutionalize poverty measurement among its members to monitor and achieve their goals.

The PPI pilot was conducted with four members of MON-PAK, namely, Khajji Cooperative Society, SAATH Development Society, Mehran Educational Society (MES) and Shadab Rural Development Organization (SRDO). PPI implementation took place in all four institutions from 1 March to 30 June 2010. The four institutions collected 12,000 PPI scorecards, of which 59.4 percent were from active clients and 40.6 percent were from potential clients. Findings include:

• Average poverty among clients is close to the average poverty among all people in the region, although there are some variations among institutions;
• SRDO has the highest client poverty against the USAID Extreme, National and $1.25/day poverty lines;
• MES has the highest poverty rates among the four institutions for the poverty lines of $2.50/day and $3.75/day;
• Poverty rates of potential clients are slightly higher than active clients for each institution;
• Clients for seasonal loans have the highest poverty rates across all poverty lines.