Scaling Up Local Perceptions of Poverty to Country Level: A Proof of Concept for Rural Honduras

This work is about bringing together different perceptions of poverty to improve the design of poverty alleviation policies. A case study in Honduras shows how locally derived poverty indicators, developed from village‐level participatory appraisals of perceptions of poverty, can be extrapolated to country level using raw census data. The “well‐being index,” an average of several indicators, is robust and reflects actual local perceptions with 90% accuracy at village level. Because the index includes information that corresponds to the real‐life situation of the poor, I suggest that policymakers consider building and using such bottom‐up indicators. This implies a shift from economic to critical thinking that would lead to policies that are more easily adopted and monitored locally.