Monitoring and Evaluation NEWS

The Basic Necessities Survey (BNS)

The Basic Necessities Survey (BNS) is a method of measuring poverty that is:

• simple to design and implement. The results are easy to analyse and to communicate to others
• democratic in the way that it identifies what constitutes poverty and who is poor
• rights based, in its emphasis on entitlement

The Basic Necessities Survey (BNS) has not been invented de novo. It build on and adapts earlier methods that have been used to measure poverty that measure deprivation and which emphasise the “consensual” definition of poverty. The BNS was developed by Rick Davies in 1997, and implemented by ActionAid Vietnam in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2006.

The main documents which informed the design of the BNS were:

• Frayman, H (1991) Breadline Britain 1990s. Booklet by London Weekend Television.
• Mack, J., and Lansley, S. (1985) Poor Britain. Allen and Unwin. London.
• Gordon, D., Pantazis, C (eds) (1997) Breadline Britain 1990s. Ashgate Publishers Ltd.
  UK.
• Hallerod, B. (1994) A New Approach to the Direct Consensual Measurement of
  Poverty. Social Policy Research Centre Discussion Paper No. 50. University of New
  South Wales.
• Hallerod, B. (1994) Poverty in Sweden: A New Approach to the Direct Measurement
  of Consensual Poverty. UMEA Studies in Sociology No. 106. Umea University. Umea.

Use of the BNS in Vietnam

• Beyond Wealth Ranking: The Democratic Definition and Measurement of Poverty A Briefing Note prepared by Rick Davies (CDS Swansea for the ODI Workshop “Indicators of Poverty: Operational Significance“, held on Wednesday, 8 October 1997 in London.

• The Basic Necessities Survey:. the experience of ActionAid Vietnam. Rick Davies and William Smith, Hanoi, Vietnam September, 1998.

• The 2006 Basic Necessities Survey (BNS) in Can Loc District, Ha Tinh Province, Vietnam A report by the Pro Poor Centre and Rick Davies.

Uses elswhere

• FREEDOM FROM HUNGER Mali Poverty Outreach Study of the Kafo Jiginew and Nyèsigiso Credit and Savings with Education Programs Anastase Nteziyaremye and Barbara MkNelly May 2001 RESEARCH PAPER NO. 7. See section 1.0 Clients’ Relative Poverty by Financial Product: Basic Needs Survey (pages 9-11 on the method, pages 17-25 on the results and pages 81-83 for the BNS survey format). The BNS survey was used to find out if a specific credit package (CEE) was better at reaching relatively poorer households than the credit unions’ other financial products? In total, 498 randomly selected clients from different financial products of two credit union networks were interviewed. The method and results are both well described.

• Household Surveys—a tool for conservation design, action and monitoring. USAID & Wildlife Conservation Society Technical Manual 4. August 2006. This includes a four page section on how to implement a Basic Necessities Survey. It describes the BNS as a “wonderfully quick and relatively inexpensive way to measure and analyse household level poverty and to track changes in poverty levels over time”.

• Towards a Democratic Definition of Poverty: Socially Perceived Necessities in South Africa (2007) Gemma Wright, Michael Noble and Wiseman Magasela. Cape Town: HSRC Press. See other related publications under the Indicators of Poverty and Social Exclusion Project at the Centre for the Analysis of South African Social Policy.

Related methods

• The use of weighted checklists to assess the performance of services having more than one dimension to their performance. Such as health centres or schools.