A Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA) has been defined as “ … an instrument for including poor people’s views in the analysis of poverty and the formulation of strategies to reduce it through public policy”.

An important characteristic of any PPA is that its process starts with grassroots participatory analysis and dialogue, and culminates in greater understanding of policy implications and hence better policies. In turn this is expected to lead to more effective action for poverty reduction.

Thus a PPA aims to improve poverty reduction actions by promoting improved understanding of policy impacts (or gaps in policy) and how these affect poor people. More specifically, therefore, PPAs can lead to better poverty reduction processes through: o increasing and broadening of participation of poor people themselves (leading to increased ownership); o articulating the voices of the poor, thus enriching understanding; o providing quick and high quality information in a cost-effective way; and, o establishing new relationships between policy-makers, service providers, Civil Society Organisations, donors, and communities themselves.

A PPA thus aims to achieve four key things:

• better understanding of poverty

• new constituencies for anti-poverty action 

• enhanced accountability to poor people 

• more effective policies and action