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• Poverty Measurement Training: Monitoring Poverty and Inequality in Developing Countries and Beyond

  • Start
    August 23, 2026
  •  
    9:00 AM
  • End
    August 24, 2026
  •  
    5:00 PM
  • Location
    Day 1: Radisson Collection Hotel, Grand Place Brussel (rooms TBA), Day 2: National Bank of Belgium (rooms A1 and A2)

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  Poverty Measurement Training:  Monitoring Poverty and Inequality in Developing Countries and Beyond

  Presenters: Dean Jolliffe, Hai-Anh Dang, Nishant Yonzan, Diana C. Garcia Rojas
  (World Bank Group); David Johnson (IARIW)

  Course Description:  This training will detail how to monitor several measures of wellbeing, including poverty, prosperity, inequality, and social mobility. It will go through the key steps of monetary poverty analysis, including household survey data collection, creation of consumption aggregates, adjustments for price variation and household composition, construction of poverty lines, and calculation of different poverty measures. Finally, the course will demonstrate how to access harmonized consumption data from the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) through Stata, R, and a remote-execution system, and include hands-on exercises with the data. The course was developed with financial support from the UK government through the Data and Evidence for Tackling Extreme Poverty (DEEP) Research Programme. 

  • Learning Objectives: The course is designed to improve the ability to think critically about reported measures of poverty, prosperity, inequality and social mobility – both to assess the ways in which they can be used to better inform policy and also to understand their shortcomings. In addition to this broad objective, a very specific objective of the course will be to teach how to use online tools to access data on these concepts and develop in some cases, global, regional and country estimates.
  • Target Audience and Qualifications: Researchers, analysts, and advisors to policy makers interested in measuring and estimating poverty, prosperity, inequality & mobility. Participants are expected to have prior training in economics and statistics, as well as a working knowledge of the statistical software Stata. For the applied sessions, participants are advised to bring a laptop equipped with Stata version 16 or later, or with R installed.

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• National Accounts Training: Insights on the System of National Accounts and Accounting for the Environment

  • Start
    August 23, 2026
  •  
    9:00 AM
  • End
    August 24, 2026
  •  
    5:00 PM
  • Location
    Day 1: Radisson Collection Hotel, Grand Place Brussel (rooms TBA), Day 2: National Bank of Belgium (rooms A1 and A2)

  Register

  National Accounts Training:  Insights on the System of National Accounts and Accounting for the Environment

  Presenters:  Peter van de Ven (Lead Editor of the 2025 SNA), Carl Obst (Institute of Development of Environmental-Economic Accounting, IDEEA Group)

  Day 1: Insights on the Update of the System of National Accounts

  • The first part of the day will provide a general overview of the System of National Accounts, including a historical overview, a description of its generic setup, and a summary of its key features. It will then zoom in on specific sectors, transactions and stocks as covered in the SNA sequence of economic accounts. Issues related to price and volume measurement will also be addressed.
  • The second part of Day 1 will focus on the most recent SNA update, providing participants an understanding of work accomplished to date and zooming in on the most important changes in the 2025 SNA. It will address issues related to, among others, globalisation, digitalization and well-being and sustainability. In addition to conceptual guidance, the session will reflect on practical implementation guidance for specific recommendations developed by dedicated Task Teams. Participants will acquire a broad overview of the new SNA guidance developed by international experts on a range of topics, along with insights into the underlying rationale for the changes and the practical challenges associated with the 2025 SNA enhancements.

  Day 2: Accounting for the Environment

  • The first part of the day will be dedicated to reviewing developments for standards in environmental economic accounting via the System of Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA) over the past 12 years and to providing an overview of key components across the SEEA Central Framework and SEEA Ecosystem Accounting. An extended discussion on ecosystem accounting and connections to the SNA will be provided, including, for example, the use of the net present value (NPV) method, measurement of degradation, and alternate income aggregates. Key conceptual challenges, such as the estimation of exchange values for non-market ecosystem services will be highlighted. The session will also describe emerging connections and applications of the SEEA, including links to international conventions (CBD, UNCCD, SDG), private sector environmental accounting, sustainable finance, risk assessments and scenario analysis. It will also include an exercise where participants can experiment with the compilation of some relevant tables.
  • The second part of Day 2 will zoom in on specific topics in environmental economic accounting. First, the session will discuss the measurement of depletion of natural resources, including discussion and findings emerging from the OECD Expert Group on Natural Capital that has developed practical guidance to assist countries in implementing recommendations on natural resources included in the 2025 SNA. Second, the session will then discuss the valuation of ecosystem services, zooming in on specific conceptual and methodological complexities. Third, it will reflect on how natural capital may best be integrated in the balance sheets, both in the SNA and in the SEEA, as well as in comprehensive wealth measures such as those published in the World Bank’s Changing Wealth of Nations program. Finally, a short introduction to the current update of the SEEA Central Framework will be provided including a summary of the main technical issues that are under consideration.

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