Situating PEP in the International Poverty Debate

            Each of the three PEP networks has already demonstrated considerable merit and potential to contribute in the current era of international focus on poverty reduction strategies, policies and programs. Substantively, this stage of PRSP (poverty reduction strategies and programs) emphasizes a wide range of areas requiring attention, as covered in the two volume of the Bank's PRSP handbook (Table 1).

Table 1: Tables of contents of World Bank PRSP handbook volumes

VOLUME 1 Core Techniques and Cross-Cutting Issues		VOLUME 2: Macro and Sectoral Issues
Preface Overview   1. Core Techniques 1.1. Poverty Measurement and Analysis 1.2. Inequality and Social Welfare 1.3. Monitoring and Evaluation 1.4. Development Targets and Costs 1.5. Strengthening Statistical Systems 1.6. Public Spending 2. Cross-cutting Issues 2.1. Participation 2.2. Governance 2.3. Community-Driven Development 2.4. Gender 2.5. Environment		1. Macro and Structural Issues  1.1. Macroeconomic Issues 1.2. Trade 2. Rural and Urban Poverty  2.1. Prologue 2.2. Rural Poverty 2.3. Urban Poverty 3. Human Development   3.1. Social Protection 3.2. Health 3.3. Education 4. Private Sector and Infrastructure 4.0. Overview 4.1. Energy 4.2. Transport 4.3. Water 4.4. ICT 4.5. Mining

             MIMAP has invested for the past 10 years in research and capacity building in poverty measurement and analysis, monitoring and evaluation, and strengthening statistical systems (PMMA) - and in macroeconomic issues/policies including trade (MPIA) - with gender as a strongly integrated dimension. These were the heart of MIMAP national projects, and are now the heart of the PMMA and MPIA networks. Public spending, health and education have been consistent topics of focus studies, and are emerging as themes in the PMMA and MPIA networks. The CBMS focus emerged from decentralization and the realization that the more finely targeted dimensions of poverty reduction can be achieved only through participation, improved local governance and community-driven development. The CBMS initiatives are as much (and perhaps more importantly) about governance and empowerment than about resource allocation.

            It has become increasingly clear that poverty reduction strategies and programs will succeed only with a regular (annual) base of understanding poverty in its many dimensions, and how it is changing. This is the focus of the PMMA and CBMS networks - the former based primarily on survey methods, and the latter being the only viable way of achieving a sufficiently detailed annual survey or census at the local level. MIMAP has been a pioneer of multidimensional poverty analysis and monitoring, going beyond the traditional income and expenditure measures, and this has come to be recognized as essential. PMMA and CBMS methods are now also central to monitoring and evaluating the impact and effectiveness of poverty reduction strategies and interventions. In this regard, the PMMA network is expanding its proposed agenda to include, notably, impacts of public spending, labour markets, intra-household allocation and poverty dynamics.

            It has also become increasingly accepted that poverty reduction strategies and programs will not succeed without good ongoing understanding of the impacts of macroeconomic policies and shocks on poverty. MIMAP's decade-long investment in modeling and policy impact assessment, culminating in the MPIA network, have supported research, capacity development and leading edge methods (e.g. micro simulation) which are now at the heart of international debates on pro-poor macro policies, the impacts of globalization and liberalization on equity and poverty, and the development of sectoral programs and interventions to combat impacts of macro policies and events where these are negative. Currently, the MPIA network is expanding its agenda to increase the reliability of macro-micro analysis (e.g. labour market modeling, impacts of sectoral spending) and to redress the undue focus of debates and analysis on the static concepts of efficiency and equity through analysis of the dynamic factors affecting growth and development (e.g. capital accumulation, education, population and perhaps institutional and governance factors).

            In terms of global PRSP processes, MIMAP and the PEP networks have generally not attempted to become directly involved in the IFI processes[1] - with concurrence of IDRC's Board - but have strongly supported network members and recipients to be engaged and in some cases lead in their own countries. Considerable success has been achieved through MIMAP's experience and investments in capacity building, development of analytical tools adapted to researchers, networking and training - and through MIMAP's consistent support of Southern ownership. MIMAP is increasingly cited in, and MIMAP representatives increasingly invited to join, IFI and donor initiatives. This has largely stemmed from the concentration of experience in the three PEP networks. A platform has been built enabling MIMAP and these networks to speak with some authority and impact on the global PRSP issues and debates, and MIMAP partners plan to do this increasingly in several fora over the initial phase of PEP.

            The CBMS, PMMA and MPIA networks have quite close links that justify their grouping within the umbrella PEP network. Indeed, many of the same researchers have, in the past, been involved in two or all three of these network activities. All three networks share a common interest in studying poverty issues and their different viewpoints – micro, macro and community-based – are very complementary. Thus researchers in each of these networks learn from one another, particularly through annual general meetings, interaction at the national level and possible formal collaboration.

            Some concrete examples may illustrate this point. As MPIA modelers attempt to assess poverty impacts of macro shocks, they are increasingly working with the household survey data and the poverty indicators used in the PMMA group and may need assistance from PMMA researchers in the process. At the same time, PMMA researchers are increasingly interested in examining the marginal impacts of policy changes (assuming everything else remains constant) and could usefully compare their results with those of the discrete general equilibrium impacts analyzed by the MPIA group. Both of these networks have separately identified labour markets, public spending and gender/intra-household allocation issues as important themes for their future research and are likely to have some formal or informal interaction in these regards (see section 3). CBMS and PMMA researchers are even more closely linked by their use of a common set of poverty indicators with, respectively, community-based and nationally representative household survey data. Generally speaking, information gathered at the community and micro level can alert macro modelers to important policy issues as expressed by households. At the same time, macro modelers can provide the micro and community-based researchers with information on the macro framework impacting households and poverty.

            Much of the interaction between PEP networks will emerge naturally and informally as researchers come to appreciate the contributions researchers from other networks can make. Where researchers from different networks address similar issues with different methodologies, especially (but not exclusively) when they are in the same country, they will be encouraged to include some comparative or joint research activities (and publications) in their respective proposals. Integration of research results from the different networks will also be a major part of the preparation of policy recommendation papers and meta analyses involving resource persons and PEP researchers.

            While the decision to organize these researchers into three networks and to gather these networks into the umbrella PEP network recognizes the importance of encouraging interaction between researchers in different countries working on similar issues and using similar or complementary research methodologies, efforts will be made to maintain links between researchers working in different PEP networks, other MIMAP (e.g. gender network, DAN, etc.) and IDRC projects (e.g. TEC, VERN, etc.), as well as outside researchers working on poverty issues. These links will allow researchers to benefit from each other's perspectives and expertise, as required to appropriately addressed multi-faceted poverty issues. 

            There are a number of clear examples of complementarity between research in the PEP network and the MIMAP thematic networks. Several PMMA projects examine health issues from a micro-economic viewpoint and will thus benefit from interaction with the "Macroeconomic Policy, Adjustment and Health Systems" network. Work on public spending in the MPIA and PMMA networks should also interact with this network. Gender issues, particularly questions of intra-household distribution, also figure prominently in both MPIA and PMMA networks and should be kept in contact with the "Gender Dimensions and Impacts of Macroeconomic Policy" and "Gender Dimensions of Public Budgets" thematic networks. As mentioned above, both the PMMA and MPIA networks have identified labour markets as a priority area for future research (Macroeconomic Policy, Adjustment and Labor network).

            To foster interaction with other MIMAP and IDRC projects, researchers and resource persons from these projects will be invited to participate in PEP annual, interim, national and regional meetings. Ideally, meetings of the PEP network and meetings of these other projects, particularly the MIMAP thematic networks, could he held simultaneously. Formal or informal collaboration, particularly at the national level, could also be useful for a number of purposes such as: dissemination and links to policymakers (national dissemination conferences, informal consultation, national publication of research results, newsletters and policy briefs, national Program Steering committees in all stages of research, national web sites, etc.); peer review; mutual advice on key research issues (e.g. poverty issues emerging from PMMA and CBMS work that could be examined in a macro MPIA framework; MPIA macro background to micro PMMA and CBMS work; co-ordination of national- and community-level poverty monitoring between PMMA and CBMS researchers; etc.); technical assistance (e.g. PMMA researchers could help MPIA researchers in estimating poverty indicators based on model simulation results, in modeling the labour market, in estimating key modeling parameters, etc.).