ABSTRACT
The previous chapters analysed poverty using the official poverty identification method, the monetary approach and participatory poverty assessment. However, none of these approaches was found to be problem free. A great deal of politics proved to be involved in the official poverty identification method. Household surveys were time-consuming and costly. Both income and expenditure poverty lines turned out to be objective, arbitrary and of dubious accuracy. Poverty identification using a participatory approach, however, was perhaps too subjective. The results of the participatory poverty assessment were difficult to standardize and compare at the macro level, meaning that no generalizations could be made.
