Announcing Our New and Improved PPI Construction Methodology, and Updated Zambia PPI

Since Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) became the new home of the PPI in 2016, IPA has proven to be an excellent fit for further scaling the PPI, as we are able to tap into its survey and data quality expertise in country offices around the world. Over the past year, we have made great progress towards our objective of having a long-term sustainable model for the tool, including a technical team and scorecard development capacity that is institutionalized at IPA. We have undertaken a brand refresh, and changed the name of the PPI from "Progress out of Poverty Index" to "Poverty Probability Index" to better reflect what the tool does.

In line with our commitment to continual improvement, where our core business is rigorous data and evidence and the creation of public goods, we have updated the methodology behind the development of the PPI. Existing PPIs remain valid and will be supported by the PPI Help Desk. However, the new methodology will be used to create new PPIs, and update existing PPIs from this point on. You can see the PPIs that are currently slated for development on our website here.

In addition, we are pleased to release an updated Zambia PPI, the first PPI utilizing the new construction methodology. This PPI has been developed using data from Zambia’s 2015 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey (LCMS). Going forward, users should use this latest version of the PPI for Zambia instead of the previous version, which was developed using Zambia’s 2010 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey (LCMS). To download the updated Zambia PPI, visit our Zambia country page.

Learn more about the changes to the PPI in the full announcement on our blog and FAQs page.