Geographical targeting of poverty alleviation programs: methodology and applications in rural India

The paper presents a methodology for mapping poverty within national borders at the level of relatively small geographical areas and illustrates this methodology for India. Poverty alleviation programs in India are presently targeted only at the level of the state. All states includes, however, many non-poor households, whereas many poor households who live in states that have not been selected for the targeted programs are left out. The paper applies the methodology for mapping poverty at the level of districts in India, thus increasing the target areas from the 24 states (with over 40 million people in each) to 466 districts (with only around 2 million people in each).