Measuring non-monetary poverty in the coffee heartlands of Laos and Rwanda: comparing MPI and EDI frameworks

ABSTRACT Poverty reduction is a key objective of development interventions. Evaluating the effectiveness of policies and programmes thus requires practical, reliable and context-relevant measures of poverty. This article is the first to compare the new Extreme Deprivation Index (EDI) framework with the increasingly used global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) framework. Locally adapted versions of both non-monetary poverty measures were calculated for each household using an original survey in Rwanda’s main coffee-producing region (a high deprivation context) and another in Laos’s main coffee-producing region (a relatively low deprivation context). We examine the resulting poverty profiles and discuss implications for policy design and evaluation. We find that, despite limited overlap, in both contexts each index identifies households that are consistently worse off on multiple key markers of poverty and can therefore be considered valid measures. In addition, known key markers of poverty can predict adjusted global MPI status better than EDI status in Laos, whereas the EDI framework performs best in Rwanda. We conclude that the EDI framework provides a quick and reliable way to identify households with very low standards of living in high deprivation contexts. It is particularly useful for programmes with limited resources operating in comparatively poor rural settings.