Poverty alleviation is the first of the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. However, the three decades of progress in poverty alleviation hit the COVID-19 pandemic wall (World Bank, 2022). This was further exacerbated by longstanding macroeconomic mismanagement in countries such as Sri Lanka. Counting the poor is the first step in poverty alleviation (The Economist, 2023). Deaton (2016), for example, notes that recording details of how people live, their consumption patterns, and their expenditure has long served as a tool, sometimes a political one, that aimed to bring the living conditions of the impoverished to the attention of those in authority, to evoke shock, and to advocate for reform.
By employing unsupervised and supervised machine learning techniques, we explore the feasibility of utilizing mobile call detail records (CDRs) as well as geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) data to map poverty spatially
Draft: Open for Comments Social protection is a critical tool for promoting economic and social inclusion, reducing inequality and poverty, addressing vulnerabilities, and investing in human development. Social protection is viewed as nationally owned policies and instruments that provide income or in-kind support, protect from deprivations and exclusion, and empower individuals and households by increasing productivity and capabilities. Responsive and accountable governance plays a vital role in removing barriers and ensuring effective checks and balances, enabling citizens to fully benefit from social protection (UNDP, 2022). The objective of this research is to understand the challenges to achieving responsive and accountable governance in social protection, which hinder citizens from fully benefiting from social protection in Sri Lanka. This paper will draw on one of the key thematic areas identified in UNDP’s Social Protection Offer 2.
Draft paper, open for comments Many countries use multidimensional approaches to determine eligibility for social assistance programmes. However, monetary-based metrics remain a key tool used for measure poverty. It is crucial to understand the linkages between the two, to understand how best to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the social assistance programmes. This paper looks to explore the relationship between the 22-indicator deprivation score used in Sri Lanka to determine eligibility for its key social assistance programme, Aswesuma, and the national poverty line, measured using per capita consumption expenditure, drawing on a nationally representative survey. It concludes that the deprivation score has a positive, but weak to moderate, relationship with expenditure-based poverty, and discusses implications for policymakers.
Sri Lanka Social Safety Net Survey: Survey Methodology Note
Sri Lanka Social Safety Net - Qualitative Study
Slides presented at the Advocata Institute’s #ReformNow conference on 5 August 2022
Launch of NMSJ Common Minimum Programme – 21 June 2022