Poverty mapping in the republic of Bulgaria

In 2016 the National Statistical Institute and the World Bank started working on the Project ‘Poverty mapping in the Republic of Bulgaria’ (PM). The Project is part of the Government and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) Programme, which is realised by experts of the National Statistical Institute (NSI) and the World Bank (WB). The Project implemented with the financial support of European Commission through the Europe 2020 Programme Trust Fund (TF0A1034), Project ‘Mapping poverty in the new EU member states’. The main project objective is to calculate the shares of population at-risk-ofpoverty at low territorial levels (districts and municipalities). In Bulgaria, as in other European countries, the Survey of income and living conditions (SILC) is used as the main tool for estimating the population at-risk-of-poverty. The survey ensures the availability of large sets of indicators measuring poverty and living conditions, but due to its nature of being a sample survey, it cannot provide information at low territorial levels like municipalities and settlements. Small area estimation methods, different from ‘direct’ ones have to be used in order to produce information at low territorial levels. Combining data from sample surveys and additional sources like the population census or administrative data is necessary. Reference years of the data sources used as a basis for small area estimations have to be as close to each other as possible