Critically examine the Monthly Per Capita Expenditure (MPCE) used by the government as proxy for income of households to identify the poor.

There are many mechanism to identify for the poor. Our government uses Monthly Per Capita Expenditure (MPCE) as proxy for income of households to identify the poor. This approach has been criticised by some scholars. According to them, that this mechanism groups all the poor together and do not differentiate between the very poor and the other poor. This mechanism is helpful in identifying the poor as a group to be taken care of by the Government but it would be difficult to identify who among the poor need help the most.

Morever there are many other factors other than income and assets which are associated with poverty. For example, the accessibility to basic education, health care, drinking water and sanitation. This mechanism also does not care social factors such as literacy, ill-health, lack of access to resources discrimination or lack of civil and political freedoms into consideration.