The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool (MPAT) : robustness issues and critical assessment

The Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool (MPAT) was developed by the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development with a view to assess local-level poverty in rural regions around the globe. The MPAT is a survey-based thematic indicator of ten dimensions, from Food & Nutrition Security to Domestic Water Supply, Health & Healthcare, to Gender Equality. The aims of this validation report are: (a) to spot eventual conceptual and methodological shortcomings in the MPAT, (b) to identify suitable aggregation methods for the survey items, (c) to assess the internal consistency of the MPAT conceptual framework, and finally, (d) to offer snapshots of the MPAT results. The results show that the MPAT, upon some improvements throughout the entire development, would pass the "statistical" filters of index quality, and it could thus be reliably used to identify weaknesses and possible remedial actions, prioritize villages or even households with relatively low levels of rural poverty, and ultimately monitor and evaluate policy effectiveness. The analysis undertaken in this work provides no guarantee of the true ability of the MPAT to describe rural poverty world wide. Yet, it provides enough evidence that the MPAT cannot easily be falsified by methodological cunning.