The Progress out of Poverty Index™ (PPI™) for South Africa is an easy-to-use, objective client poverty assessment tool. It estimates the likelihood that a participant has income below the National Poverty line, Food Poverty line, USAID "Extreme" Poverty Line, $1.25/Day/2005 PPP, $2.50/Day/2005 PPP, $4.00/Day/2005 PPP, and the Upper Line.

The PPI uses 10 simple indicators that field workers can quickly collect and verify. Scores can be computed by hand on paper in real time. The PPI can help programs target services, track changes in poverty over time, and report on poverty rates.

Indicators in the PPI are based on the 2005/06 IES. This is the best, most recent household survey available with income or expenditure data. The latest version of the PPI for South Africa was created in April 2009.

* This description is taken from: The Progress out of Poverty Index^TM: A Simple Poverty Scorecard for South Africa, Shiyuan Chen, Mark Schreiner, and Gary Woller.

PPI™ Toolkit for South Africa

• PPI™ Design Documentation for South Africa: A detailed technical description of the PPI construction and design, written by Mark Schreiner.
• PPI™ Indicators and Lookup Table for South Africa: Country-specific set of PPI indicators and corresponding poverty likelihood lookup table.
• PPI Interview Guidelines for South Africa: Definitions and instructions for enumerators based on the data. No guidelines currently exist based on the enumerator manual. If you can provide any information please contact us at info@progressoutofpoverty.org.
• PPI Sampling Guidelines for South Africa: This document allows users to determine a sample size with precision levels of their choice. It also enables users to determine the precision levels for a given sample size (N).
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)