Measuring health and poverty: a review of approaches to identifying the poor

Poverty reduction is now the overarching objective of the international donor community. In 2000, world leaders issued the Millennium Declaration, setting out eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Targets for the health-related MDGs include: reducing infant and child mortality by two-thirds by 2015; reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015 and improving access to reproductive health services; halting the increase in incidence of communicable diseases (AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis); and reducing malnutrition by halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015. There is a growing recognition that the health-related MDG targets need to be modified to incorporate an explicit poverty dimension. This concern is reflected in the Department for International Development’s (DFID) strategy paper (DFID, 2000) for achieving the health related MDGs, which outlines a clear commitment to achieving better health for poor people. Given this, there is pressing need for national governments and the global development community to monitor both changes in the level and nature of poverty overtime and progress in health and educational outcomes amongst the poor (and the rich). In order to do this, reliable methods to distinguish the poor are needed