Aid Toolkit

Practical data tools for humanitarian and development agencies in Afghanistan. Each tool is built on verified official data sources and updated regularly.

Need custom analysis or full province-level data? Contact us at contact@dataforafghanistan.org

Latest Poverty Lines (PL) by Select Provinces

January 2026

PL is expressed as Afghanis (AFN) per person per month. Prices are updated to latest available month using the NSIA Consumer Price Index (CPI). Food component is anchored to Kabul prices per IE&LFS 2020 methodology.

Area	Food PL (AFN)	Non-food PL (AFN)	Total PL (AFN)	Total (USD)

USD conversion uses the exchange rate entered by the user. Default is 71.5 AFN.

Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB) Calculator

Enter household characteristics to calculate the recommended minimum cash transfer amount.

USD exchange rate (AFN per USD)

Enter the latest available rate. Default is 71.5 AFN

Province

Residence type

Urban Rural

Household size: 5 members

11020

Household self-coverage: 0% (% of MEB household can cover themselves)

0%50%100%

Vulnerability buffers (applied after self-coverage deduction)

Buffer stacking method

Multiplicative (compound) Maximum only

Recommended transfer value

Food PL (per person) —

Non-food PL (per person) —

Total PL (per person) —

× Household size —

MEB (household total) —

− Self-coverage deduction —

Net MEB (after self-coverage) —

× Vulnerability multiplier —

Recommended transfer

—

Transfer value = (household MEB − self-coverage) × vulnerability multiplier. Buffers are placeholders, which you can update with your own estimates.

Methodology

Baseline poverty lines

Poverty lines are drawn from Afghanistan's Income, Expenditure and Labour Force Survey 2020 (IE&LFS 2020), conducted by the National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA). Poverty lines are estimated per person per month. The food poverty line is set at the cost of obtaining 2,100 kcal per person per day from a reference basket reflecting actual Afghan food consumption. The reference basket was priced at Central Urban (Kabul) prices in Q1 2019 (October–December 2019). Its value was AFN 1,330 per person per month. Non-food poverty lines are area-specific (14 areas covering Afghanistan's 8 regions × urban/rural residence), and priced in Q1 2019 (October–December 2019) prices at the time of the survey (IE&LFS 2020).

Updating to current prices

The food poverty line is updated monthly using the Kabul food CPI from NSIA, maintaining consistency with the Kabul price base of the original survey. The non-food poverty line for each area's associated provinces is updated using the province-level non-food CPI from NSIA, hence preserving the spatial variation estimated in 2019-2020. This approach produces a total poverty line per person per month in current Afghani for each province × urban/rural residence combination.

Household MEB calculation

The Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB) for a household is the total poverty line per person multiplied by household size. A self-coverage deduction can be applied to reflect the portion of minimum needs a household can meet from its own income or assets, which is subtracted before calculating the recommended transfer value.

Vulnerability buffers

Percentage uplifts are applied to reflect the additional expenditure burden faced by vulnerable household types: female-headed households, internally displaced persons (IDPs), returnees, refugees, households with a disabled member, disaster-affected households, and households carrying debt. Buffer values shown are indicative placeholders. However, empirically derived values from your own work could be used to replace them for programmatic use. Two stacking options are provided: multiplicative (buffers compound independently) and maximum-only (most conservative approach).

Data sources

IE&LFS 2020 poverty lines — NSIA
Monthly food and non-food CPI by province — NSIA (latest release)

Get the Full Province-Level Data

This page shows poverty lines for select provinces. The full dataset covers all 34 provinces × urban/rural combinations, updated monthly.

Previous months' reports can be found at our ReliefWeb page as well: https://reliefweb.int/organization/data-afghanistan

Reach out at contact@dataforafghanistan.org to request the full dataset.

Request Full Dataset

Needs & Monitoring — Provincial Urgency Index

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Monthly call data from the Awaaz Afghanistan 410 helpline, processed into a province-level urgency index. Data collected retrospectively on the 2nd of each month. Source: awaazaf.org · Implemented by UNOPS.

All 34 Provinces

#	Province ↕	Calls ↕	Share of total ↕	Urgency index ↕	Urgency bar	Need signal
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Helpline Activity

Calls by type

Calls by sector

Calls by gender

Methodology

Data source

Data are collected monthly from the Awaaz Afghanistan dashboard (awaazaf.org), covering all 34 provinces. Awaaz is Afghanistan's first nationwide toll-free humanitarian helpline (dial 410), implemented by UNOPS and funded by aid partners. Prior month's data is collected on the 2nd of each month.

Urgency index — construction

The Urgency Index (0–100) is derived entirely from the helpline data using four signals that are combined into a weighted composite, then normalised to a 15–100 range.

Signal definitions

S1 — Volume score (weight 50%): Calls from province p relative to the maximum across all provinces, scaled to 0–100. Captures directly reported need reaching the helpline.
S2 — Low-reach score (weight 25%): Provinces with calls below 25% of the national mean receive a proportional penalty score. Very low call volumes signal barriers to helpline access that compound — not reduce — humanitarian risk. Provinces at or above the threshold score 0 on this signal.
S3 — Returnee-Displacement signal (weight 15%): Volume score (S1) multiplied by the returnee share of all callers in the month. Reflects the heightened vulnerability context when above-average call volumes coincide with a high proportion of returnee-displaced callers.
S4 — Critical issue floor (weight 10%): A flat score applied to every province, derived from the monthly critical call rate (calls flagged as abuse, discrimination, extortion, or denial of access as a share of total calls). Prevents any province from scoring near zero when the system is under stress.

Formula

threshold = 0.25 × national_mean_calls

S1_p = (calls_p / max_calls) × 100

S2_p = if calls_p < threshold: (1 − calls_p / threshold) × 100 else 0

S3_p = S1_p × returnee_share

S4 = (critical_rate × 100) × 10

raw_p = 0.50 × S1_p + 0.25 × S2_p + 0.15 × S3_p + 0.10 × S4

Urgency_p = ((raw_p − raw_min) / (raw_max − raw_min)) × 85 + 15

Interpretation

A high urgency score reflects a combination of high reported need (call volume), potential access barriers (low-reach penalty), a displaced caller context, and a system-wide critical issue signal. Scores above 45 indicate provinces warranting priority attention. Scores below 25 for provinces with low call counts (e.g. Bamyan, Nuristan) are flagged as "Low reach" — indicating that the humanitarian situation may be worse than the helpline data alone can reveal.

Data source

Source: Awaaz Afghanistan 410 Helpline · Implemented by UNOPS · awaazaf.org