Missing Millions and Measuring Development Progress

SummaryIn developing countries, assessments of progress toward development goals are based increasingly on household surveys. These are inappropriate for obtaining information about the poorest. Typically, they omit by design: the homeless; those in institutions; and mobile, nomadic, or pastoralist populations. Moreover, in practice, household surveys typically under-represent: those in fragile, disjointed households; slum populations and areas posing security risks. Those six sub-groups constitute a large fraction of the “poorest of the poor”. We estimate that 250 million are missed worldwide from the sampling frames of such surveys and from many censuses and their omission may well lead to substantial biases.

► A progressive shift away from population censuses toward using large-scale household surveys.
► Household surveys, many censuses omit several population categories both by design and in practice.
► In developing countries, these categories are predominantly in the poorest income group.
► The estimate is that between 300 and 350 million of the poorest missing from world population counts.
► The omitted groups would constitute between 17.5% and 35% of the bottom quintile, a serious bias.