FEG carried out research and analysis for Save the Children to answer questions about the effect of poverty on children in its programme areas, and, specifically, to what extent minimum standards of wellbeing are affordable to the poor. The initial study by FEG was commissioned by Save the Children International, with funding from ECHO through the HEA Sahel Project. It was a response to a global review of HEA that recommended a deeper analysis of how household level spending affected children’s welfare. Download the full report here.
For the study, a process was created to calculate the minimum cost to meet sector standards of well-being for 6 sector baskets: WASH, shelter/home NFI, education, health, and food. It used accepted international and national standards to guide which items, and how much of each item, should go into the Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB). The approach was designed and tested using data collected from two rural agro-pastoral livelihood zones in Niger and Senegal. The results have been incorporated in HEA scenario and resilience analysis.
Between 2018-2021, additional MEB studies were carried out for Save the Children in selected livelihood zones in Nigeria, northern Somalia, and Guatemala. In these countries, the sector standard MEB provides a consumption target against which to measure income deficits and inform decisions about what food, cash or income support is needed to meet agreed consumption targets.