the qualitative research (which, certainly in Vietnam, attracts greater skepticism). Even in these areas of overlap, there was a useful difference of focus between the two sets of information with the quantitative data providing robust, nationally representative trends and the qualitative studies helping to indicate some of the explanation for those trends.

Important areas where findings from the PPAs and the VLSS differed included:

- The socio-economic position of female-headed households, who were routinely described as being poor and vulnerable in the PPAs but which emerge from the data as being better off in per capita expenditure terms;

- The scope and nature of urban poverty, which does not appear to be a pressing problem from the VLSS but which the PPAs suggest could be an issue of importance.

# **_Policy responses: follow-up beyond the final report_**

Many would agree that most of these issues had been raised in various qualitative and/or quantitative studies over recent years. The difference here, arguably, was that the research was embedded in an influential process, a process that involved many of the important agencies in local and national policymaking for poverty reduction. Though it is still early to have generated dramatic policy change, there are several examples of the PPAs feeding into policy debate in a substantive way.

## Broadening the policy debate

A recent workshop of various stakeholders (including central and local policymakers) involved in the PPAs concluded that, for a number of reasons including the short time since the PPAs were implemented, the impact of the PPAs _on policymaking_ had been greater than the influence on _policy_ to date. The impact on policymaking has come about through:

- Shaping the public policy agenda, broadening the policy debate

- Elevating the status of qualitative research in national assessments of poverty and promoting bottom-up approaches to planning and policy-making

- Creating more places at the national policy-making table and ensuring that voices of all stakeholders are heard

- In addition, one group at the evaluation workshop reported that the PPA had given local levels of Government stronger grounds for identifying "demands" and communicating them to a higher level and noted that the central level had learned more about realities at a local level.

An important first step to generating change lies in broadening the debates on policy. Previously seen as a narrow issue of hunger or income poverty, the PPAs have raised a number of topics which were not previously seen as part of poverty or which were too sensitive for frank and open debate. At the launch of _Vietnam: Attacking Poverty,_ one official commented: _"Poverty might mean social or cultural gaps between people. It might mean lack of information, transportation, knowledge, and experience in dealing with hardships. It might mean severe vulnerability, so that health shocks or crop failure lead to a cycle of asset sales and indebtedness. It might mean not being able to influence the decisions that affect your livelihoods. Or it might mean being less advantaged within your own household."_ This represents a real shift in the definition of poverty.

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