Ghana - Poverty monitoring with the core welfare indicators questionnaire

59481 No. 39 April 1999 Ghana: Poverty Monitoring with the Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire Accurate, early and easy monitoring of poverty and welfare indicators in each country periodically is critical to reducing poverty nationally and globally. The standard household surveys which are currently used to analyze the poverty situation in most countries are expensive, constitute a rather heavy work load and have witnessed substantial delays in processing and utilization by policy makers. Periodic poverty monitoring in Sub-Saharan Africa has imposed a burden financially and in terms of human resources. A new instrument was developed in the Africa Region in 1998 to carry out quick, reliable surveys using a wide range of welfare indicators. This new instrument, the Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire (CWIQ), is an innovation which has proven to be a success, both in terms of meeting the statistical need as well as doing so without too heavy a financial or human resource input. What is CWIQ? CWIQ is the outcome of a study launched at the World Bank in 1998, with the support of the UNDP, UNICEF and ILO. The study focused on designing a survey instrument which would be easy to implement and quicker to feed into the decision-making process. The new instrument was expected to complement existing surveys in understanding the evolution of welfare and poverty in a national setting. The most important feature to distinguish the CWIQ from other ‘poverty’ surveys is that it is not designed to serve as a tool to measure whether poverty levels are increasing or decreasing. It is only intended to serve as a tool for measuring whether public services and development programs are reaching the poor and benefiting them or not. These are much easier indicators to measure and much less ‘noisy’. As a result, many of the measurement issues highlighted above, are avoided. The key features of the CWIQ are : a short questionnaire, easy data collection, quick data entry and validation, pre-programmed output tables, and a fixed core/flexible module design. The CWIQ is designed to focus on the three simple leading indicators of access, usage and satisfaction with the different services provided. For instance, in the education sector, access indicators include distance to primary and secondary schooling; usage indicators include primary and secondary school enrollment rates; and satisfaction indicators are based on opinion questions to indicate household ratings of the quality of services during the current year compared with the previous year. According to the Ghana survey, access to primary schools is rarely a problem Ninety percent of the population are within 30 minutes of a school. Even in the remote and poorest areas, over 85% of the population have easy access. Usage (defined as the net primary enrollment rate) is lower - approximately 70%, but again there is no major difference in enrollments across each household group. But when it comes to the quality of service (defined in terms of the percentage of users satisfied), there is a completely different message. For the country as a whole, the percentage of satisfied users is only 40%, but this hides large differences between the urban population (60%) and the rural population (30%). The rural poor are particularly disadvantaged - less than 20% satisfied. While the main reasons for user dissatisfaction is the lack of books, the major problems in the rural areas, particularly among the rural poor, relate to poor facilities and overcrowding. Lessons Learned Easy to implement: CWIQ uses a short pre-programmed questionnaire which can be read after enumeration using scanners. Being short, simple and easy to understand, the questionnaire makes implementation relatively easy for respondents and enumerators. Rapid turnaround: CWIQ uses Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) scanners to read the enumerated questionnaires which are then automatically verified for outliers and errors before producing pre-programmed tables and charts for the standard results report. Technically not demanding: Even though CWIQ uses OMR and other data cleaning and analysis in-built programs, they are not technically demanding on the implementing country's statistical personnel. In fact, in Ghana, statisticians were pleased with the "hassle-free" system in generating the required output in a short time. Economic use of scarce financial and personnel resources: Most national surveys have become unattractive in SSA as they require a lot of planning involving financial and personnel resources to ensure success and sustainability. CWIQ makes this challenge easier to meet as its costs are almost half that of a standard household survey, takes a much shorter time to administer, and is not demanding on scarce data analytical skills. Demand for CWIQ indicators very high among various stakeholders: CWIQ is able to generate outcome and impact indicators much more easily to evaluate the impact of ongoing policies and programs in terms of basic indicators of quality of life. CWIQ provides ready-to- use indicators for policy makers and planners to evaluate the impact of interventions in health, education, immunization, sanitation etc. where most development assistance is targeted. Up-front planning on procurement of goods and services is very important for timeliness of implementation: Although CWIQ is fast and easy to implement, it does require up-front planning and a clear resource line-up before it can take off. For instance, the procurement of goods and services required for each step of the survey needs to be planned up-front to be able to implement the survey within a short time without undue disruption. Given the enormous success of the first national CWIQ in Ghana in 1997, the Ghanaians are planning the second national CWIQ for the latter part of 1999. They are also using some of the CWIQ technological innovations for the forthcoming national 2000 Census. For more information, please contact Tim Marchant, World Bank, Rm. J5-173, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20433, tel. no. : ( 202) 473-4721, e-mail address : Tmarchant@worldbank.org or Sudarshan Canagarajah, Rm. J8-167, tel. no. : (202) 473- 3515, e-mail address : Scanagarajah@worldbank.org