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

See The Basics of the Basic Necessity Survey (BNS), at the end of this page.

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

Uses elsewhere

  • 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”. PS (23/07/08): The Wildlife Conservation Society are now pre-testing the use of BNS in Cambodia and Guatamala, with a view to possibly using on a wider scale within their international program.
  • Findings from the Indicators of Poverty and Social Exclusion Project: A Profile of Poverty using the Socially Perceived Necessities Approach (2008) Gemma Wright. Department of Social Development, Republic of South Africa. NB: Wright et al use a Proportional Deprivation Index, which is similar to, but not the same as, the Basic Necessities Survey poverty measure. One of the things I like about this study was the menu items included services, such as “Street lighting” (formal) and “Someone to transport you in a vehicle if you needed to travel in an emergency” (informal). Also very interesting was the degree of unanimity across different social groups in South Africa about which items constituted basic necessities.
  • Katine VSLA Project Baseline Survey Report. This report was prepared for the CARE SUSTAIN project in Uganda, by Margaret Kemigisa, a Ugandan Consultant, in December 2008. The SUSTAIN project is promoting Village Savings and Loans (VSL methodology in Katine Sub County, Soroti district…. The survey aimed at establishing the overall poverty and welfare status of VSLA clients/house holds & non VSLA clients (control group), livelihood sources of different social groupings of VSLA and non VSLA clients, socio-economic characteristics of the groups that benefit from the Katine VSLA project and financial services available in Katine VSLA operational areas….The survey employed the basic necessities approach and used a control group of Non VSLA clients in Kamuda sub-county; it covered a total of 116 VSLA clients and 116 Non VSLA clients. Of interest: the items in the checklist of possible basic necessities were identified in two ways (a) via two focus groups and (b) then by suggestions from respondents during the pre-test of the survey instrument. The survey also asked whether people were satisfied with those items they did report having, thus introducing a useful and additional qualitative dimension to the BNS. Suggested contact for further information: “Barnes, Helen” barnes@careinternational.org

Related methods

The Basics of the Basic Necessity Survey (BNS): A Short Note

Caveat: The BNS is a survey method, but this note does not explain how to do surveys. It only explains the central part of the BNS method

At the planning stage

1. Develop a menu of things, activities and services that could be considered as basic necessities.

  • In the BNS, “Poverty is defined as the lack of basic necessities. Basic necessities are those things that everyone should be able to have and no one should have to go without“
    • This is a rights oriented view, focusing on perceived entitlements.

  • The items on this menu should ideally be identified through consultation with a range of people, including potential survey respondents.
  • Examples of things, activities and services could include: having a bicycle, going on a holiday for a week once a year, and being able to obtain vaccination for one’s children at a health centre in one’s district.
    • The items on the menu should be easily and reliably observed, not vague or subjective, like “high self-esteem”, or “a sustainable livelihood”
  • The items on the menu should range from those that almost everyone might agree are basic necessities to those that few will think are basic necessities, but perhaps more people will think so in the future. So, for example, consider including a television or a mobile phone on the menu.

During the survey

2. In household survey ask people three questions

  • “Which of these items do you think are basic necessities, things that everyone should be able to have and no one should have to go without“
  • This can be done by reading items out one at a time, or by asking people to sort cards into two piles, with one menu item written on each card
  • “Which of these items does your household have?”
  • This can be done by reading items out one at a time, or by asking people to sort cards into two piles, with one menu item written on each card
  • “Compared to other people in this x area (same as area sampled), do you think your household is poor or not poor?”
  • This question is optional. It is useful, because it helps to define a poverty line using the BNS survey results, but it is not essential.

After the survey

3. For each item, calculate the percentage of the respondents who say that item is a basic necessity

  • Exclude those items where less than 50% of people said it was a basic necessity
  • This is a democratic approach. Decision by majority rule. Most people did not consider these items as basic necessities.
  • For all the rest give each item a weighting, which is equal to the percentage of people who said it is a basic necessity. This percentage could range from 50% to 100%.
  • Add up the weightings for all these items. This figure would represent the raw BNS score for an imagined household that had everything on the menu, which has been democratically defined as a basic necessity.

4. For each actual household, add up the weightings for all the items on the menu (now defined as basic necessities) that they said they had. This is their raw BNS score

  • Convert this raw score into a percentage of the maximum possible raw score (step 3 above)
  • A household with a low percentage would have very few basic necessities, and a household with a high percentage would have most of them

5. Summarise the results

  • Calculate the average BNS % score for all the surveyed households
  • Make a graph showing the distribution of BNS (%) scores, to visualise the distribution of poverty. Typically many will be poor in some respect (lacking a few basic necessities, and a few will be poor in many respects (lacking most basic necessities)

6. Optional: Identification of a poverty line, defined as a specific BNS (%) score

  • Calculate the percentage of people who said they were poor (we will call this x%).
  • Move from the bottom of the curve describing the distribution of BNS % scores, (step 5 above) up to the point where now x% of the people are on the bottom half of the curve. Read off the BNS % score at that point. This BNS % score is now used as the poverty line. People below it are defined as poor.
  • This method assumes that while people may make errors of judgement about their poverty status, these errors are equally distributed. Some poor people class themselves as not poor, and some not-poor describe themselves as poor.

There is also an online PowerPoint presentation of the results of this survey

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