Review of Multidimensional Poverty Identification and Welfare Targeting for InvisibleAid

Abstract ―​

This review paper is prepared from the literature survey conducted for the project “InvisibleAid: A Rule-Based Hidden Poverty Identification and Welfare Recommendation.” Two closely related topics are selected from the surveyed literature: (1) multidimensional poverty identification and (2) welfare targeting and intervention. The first topic examines how poverty can be identified using multiple deprivation dimensions rather than income alone. The second examines how identified vulnerable households can be connected with appropriate welfare interventions and how targeting errors can affect the delivery of support. Existing studies show the importance of multidimensional indicators, household characteristics, and evidence-based targeting. However, much of the literature focuses on measurement, statistical prediction, or policy analysis rather than a transparent software workflow that performs household-level screening and connects the result to welfare recommendations. Based on these observations, InvisibleAid is positioned as a rule-based decision-support application. The review summarizes the selected literature, compares the approaches, identifies the research gap, and explains how the findings support the proposed system.