A Review of Consumption Poverty Estimation for Mozambique

Since the end of the civil war in 1992, Mozambique has registered significant progress across a range of monetary and non-monetary poverty indicators at both national and regional levels. This conclusion of material progress draws from a large array of nationally representative datasets that became available starting from 1996. This chapter is concerned with the estimation of consumption poverty rates. It begins by reviewing the challenges encountered and choices made in the national assessments. Efforts to maintain consistency imply that prior choices tend to be adopted in subsequent analyses. At the same time, the practice of consumption poverty analysis is not static. Because ‘best practice’ evolves (and hopefully improves) with time, there arises a natural tension between the desire to follow best practice and the desire to maintain consistency with previous analyses.