IFPRI Report
Volume 20, Number 1
February 1998
Research Perspectives
Training Activity Builds Capacity for Poverty Analysis in Mozambique
To alleviate poverty, countries must be able to identify the poor and to incorporate research findings into effective policies and interventions to help the poor. As part of its three-year research program on poverty issues in Mozambique, IFPRI conducted a four-week training course in November-December 1997 in Mozambique for staff members of the Department of Population and Social Development (DPDS) of the Ministry of Planning and Finance of Mozambique. In February 1998, the head of DPDS and two senior economists traveled to IFPRI’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., for more intensive training in poverty analysis.The course at IFPRI was a supplement to the ongoing training program in Maputo, Mozambique. It examined concepts related to poverty analysis and formulation of a poverty-reduction strategy, including measurement of the extent of poverty, the elements that make up such a strategy, welfare distribution within the household, and nutrition analysis, with an introduction to key nutritional indicators and their policy relevance for Mozambique.
The course also introduced the use of computable general equilibrium modeling as a tool for macroeconomic policy analysis, with a special focus on distributional issues, and provided training in the use of SPSS, the most widely used statistical package in Mozambique.
Course sessions were designed to develop an understanding of those poverty measurement issues that are central to policy formation, including measurement of individual and social welfare, inequality versus poverty, how to identify absolute poverty as compared with relative poverty, how to set poverty lines, and the use of alternative poverty measures.
Considering the nature of poverty and conceptual issues surrounding poverty alleviation, participants looked at the interaction between the microeconomic effects of poverty alleviation and the macroeconomic policy environment to bring into focus the impact of growth and structural adjustment policies on the poor. Following these general discussions, they examined specific components of Mozambique’s current approaches to poverty alleviation, including issues related to labor-intensive growth, human capital accumulation, targeting the poor, and safety nets to protect the vulnerable.
In its research program and training courses, IFPRI is using data from the first nationally representative household survey ever conducted in Mozambique to determine the extent and nature of poverty in Mozambique, in order to assist policymakers in developing a safety net system and poverty reduction strategy. Collaboration in Mozambique, which began in 1996, will continue through 1998, and training programs for additional staff of the DPDS are planned. IFPRI also plans to produce an operational manual in Portuguese on how to construct a poverty profile for Mozambique.
