Evaluation of the social progress indicators project in El Salvador

Special evaluation covers the period 2/81-10/82 and is based on document review, site visits, and indepth interviews. Due to inadequate A.I.D. monitoring, the project, which is being implemented by a permanent secretariat of the Centro de Estudios Centroamericanos de Integracion Economica y Desarollo (SIECA/ECID), has moved into several areas outside its planned scope (e.g., development of a typology of possible government policy interventions), but has still not developed a final set of social progress indicators based on the smallest feasible number of variables - a fundamental project activity. Five basic categories have been defined, but the use of 157 variables makes the analysis highly redundant. Curtailment of household surveys by the war - alternative data sources are recommended - does not explain this failure. Regarding recommendations made in the 2/81 evaluation, work has progressed on 3 of the 7 that concern income measure - correlating size of landholdings and cash income levels among rural families, classifying rural occupations, and (although much more streamlining is needed) correlating control variables. There has been no action to include an overage indicator for education, shorten the recall period on the health questionnaire (the war has curtailed all collection of field data), or verify health indicators against Ministry of Health data. Food consumption indicators have been reviewed, but housing indicators are still measured by an excessive number of variables (74). Although the project's 5/83 termination - through which currently obligated funds are sufficient - makes institutionalization a paramount issue, the proposed creation of a Ministry of Planning (MIPLAN) analysis unit is outside the project design (as is a recent $20,000 contract with two U.S. economists); the remaining time should be spent on acquainting sector personnel with the project. By contrast, the proposal to create a centralized information unit within MIPLAN seems a logical outcome of the project. Recommendations include preparing a 100-page synthesis of the 2,000 pages of project working documents.