Somkiat Tangkitvanich commended the author for the MPI approach in looking at poverty and asked whether it can be used to target subsidies to the poor.
Mohamed Ariff noted that it was a good paper with a methodology that was widely accepted. He, too, wondered if it could be used to target help for the poor. He suggested adding examples of how the MPI has been used in other countries to enhance the value of the paper.
Bhanupong Nidhiprabha felt that the role of human capital in alleviating poverty can be enhanced with a discussion on the role of health capital. He also stressed the need to explain some of the results. For example, rising age of household heads was associated with decreasing likelihood of poverty, and households headed by women were less likely to be in poverty. Why? He also cautioned that maximum likelihood estimates were sensitive to changes...