PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988-2001 1 The elusive poor: a wealth of ways to find them Report on IDS/IIED Seminar on wealth and well-being ranking

Document begins: PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988­2001 1 The elusive poor: a wealth of ways to find them Report on IDS/IIED Seminar on wealth and well-being ranking Irene Guijt Background · understanding local criteria of wealth and During the autumn of 1991, the IDS (Institute mobility in wealth. of Development Studies, Sussex) and IIED (International Institute for Environment and The purpose of the seminar on wealth and Development) organised four seminars1 on key well-being ranking was to exchange ideas on developments in the use of PRA. At the first new applications since Barbara Grandin seminar, the participants exchanged published her now famous `little blue book'2. experiences on recent innovations with wealth The need to understand social and economic and well-being ranking. dimensions of rural research have led to a wide range of applications, from The Gambia Recently, much has changed, and subsequently to Bangladesh for monitoring, planning and spread, in methods to identify and understand training purposes. Despite the important socio-economic groups within a community. contribution of these applications, wealth Since Barbara Grandin developed the card ranking is not able to overcome all problems sorting by informants it has been applied of investigating social and economic worldwide and been followed by ...