Poverty Assessment

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Mozambique Poverty Assessment, June 2023: Poverty Reduction Setback in Times of Compounding Shocks

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-28) World Bank

This report relies on several data sources. The main source providing the poverty, inequality and labor figures herein is the 2019/20 Household Budget Survey (Inquérito sobre Orçamento Familiar, IOF2019/2020) conducted by the National Statistical Institute (Instituto Nacional de Estatística, INE) starting in November 2019 and spanning 13 months. The survey’s sample was drawn from the 2017 Census and allows for poverty figures to be representative at national and provincial as well as rural and urban levels. The fieldwork included data collection from 13,297 households interviewed across four quarters as in previous surveys, to account for seasonality effects like the impact on households’ consumption of relatively more abundant post-harvest periods. The starting point for the analysis is chapter 1, which synthesizes progress in reducing poverty between 2014-15 and 2019-20. This chapter also looks at the regional distribution of poverty, the impact of the pandemic, multidimensional poverty, the profile of the poor, changes in the responsiveness of poverty to growth, discusses trends in non-monetary dimensions of wellbeing, and simulates future poverty trends. Chapter 2 examines the distribution of growth and inequality reduction over the period, the pandemic’s impact, discusses the growth-poverty-inequality relationship, assesses the spatial dimensions of poverty, and estimates the Human Opportunity Index for Mozambique. Chapter 3 focuses on labor markets and provides insights into labor force participation, unemployment, underemployment, employment sectors, child labor, and labor market demand conditions. Chapter 4 presents a fiscal incidence analysis and information on transfers. Chapter 5 examines the relevance of environmental shocks, assesses the impact of weather events on agricultural production and night-time light radiance in urban areas. It also models poverty and distributional impacts of climate change shocks and presents findings on climate change literacy in Mozambique. Finally, chapter 6 discusses a variety of policy implications.
Uganda Poverty Assessment Overview: Strengthening Resilience to Accelerate Poverty Reduction in Uganda

(Washington, DC, 2023-06-01) World Bank

The share of Uganda’s population that lives below the poverty line has fluctuated over the last seven years, greatly influenced by shocks that have tested the resilience of the people. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed both urban and rural residents into poverty. Inequality, which reflects the extent to which different population groups benefit from Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, and affects the transmission of growth into poverty reduction, remained largely unchanged over this period and may even have worsened in urban areas. The findings of this report show that previously identified patterns and drivers of Uganda’s poverty changes persisted well into 2020 – shaped by low productivity and high vulnerability. Identified inequality of economic opportunities and unequal accumulation of the human capital could hold back structural change in employment. Accelerating poverty reduction in such a setting requires a two-pronged strategy. While at the macroeconomic level, policies addressing growth fundamentals are important for reducing poverty, from a microeconomic perspective, the report’s analysis shows that two strategies will be crucial. The first strategy is to lift the productivity and incomes of poor households in both rural and urban areas. While tackling agricultural productivity and job creation are at the top of the agenda here, making mobile phone services more widely accessible and affordable is a potential opportunity. The second strategy is to strengthen people’s resilience to shocks, particularly in rural areas. To have an impact, policies in both these areas will have to address the inequality in opportunities analyzed in the report. This document provides an overview of key report findings and identifies priority actions.
Macro Poverty Outlook for Azerbaijan: April 2023 - Datasheet

( 2023-04-01) World Bank

In Azerbaijan, economic growth was 4.6 percent in 2022, driven by non-energy sectors supported by recovering demand and fiscal expansion. Inflation accelerated sharply to 13.8 percent, driven by import prices. In the medium-term, growth is expected to moderate as non-energy sector growth returns to pre-COVID levels while the energy sector shrinks further. Risks to this outlook are balanced. This Macro Poverty Outlook presents GDP, debt and fiscal forecasts and examines the implications for critical economic and social concepts such as growth, poverty reduction and macroeconomic stability.
Honduras Poverty Assessment: Toward a Path of Poverty Reduction and Inclusive Growth

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-02) Robayo-Abril, Monica ; Rude, Britta ; Cadena, Kiyomi ; Espino, Ilya

Honduras, already among the poorest countries in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region, experienced weak poverty reduction in 2014–19 compared to other countries in the region. The COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricanes Eta and Iota led to a rise in poverty from 2019 to 2020; it is likely that poverty will remain above prepandemic levels in 2021. The economic rebound in 2021, as well as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, led to an increase in food prices; at the same time, Honduras’s population is vulnerable to rising food prices and food insecurity is high. In 2019, the extreme poor spent almost half of their income on food. Additionally, food insecurity was persistently high. A striking feature of Honduras is the deep and widening urban-rural divide in terms of quality of life. There is a wide urban-rural poverty gap for both the moderate and the extreme poor, which reflects significant disparities in access to basic services such as electricity, water, and sanitation, and internet usage, as well as lower human capital accumulation and worsen labor market indicators in rural areas. While overall income inequality has been stagnant since 2014, inequality in rural areas has increased while in urban areas it has declined. The country is one of the most unequal countries in LAC. Hondurans continue to face deep and persistent disparities in access to and quality of education, with rural areas heavily penalized, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, despite high spending on education. Subnational disparities are particularly large; poverty continues to be most heavily concentrated in the country’s southwestern areas, in departments with higher shares of ethnic minorities, and in municipalities located in the south and southwest. This report focuses on the factors that have contributed to these observed poverty and inequality trends and patterns in Honduras.
Cambodia Poverty Assessment: Toward a More Inclusive and Resilient Cambodia

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11) Karamba, Wendy ; Tong, Kimsun ; Salcher, Isabelle

This poverty assessment evaluates Cambodia’s poverty reduction progress between 2009 and 2019 and contributing factors. Based on the authors understanding of contributing factors, the assessment asks what the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been, and what will be needed to support inclusive recovery. The Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) recently updated the national poverty lines for Cambodia. Prompted by Cambodia’s transition to lower middle-income status in 2015, the RGC revisited the poverty measurement methodology in 2017; the review confirmed that the way Cambodians live and spend today has changed considerably as the country became richer, and that the national poverty lines needed revising to better reflect economic realities. This assessment uses the new poverty lines to evaluate Cambodia between 2009 and 2019, coupled with other data sources. This poverty assessment covers 5 chapters. Chapter 1 examines the progress Cambodia made in reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity between 2009 and 2019. Chapter 2 examines the evolution of nonmonetary poverty between 2009 and 2019. Chapter 3 examines the profile of poverty and inequality in 2019/20. Chapter 4 examines the 2019 fiscal system and its effects on poverty and inequality in 2019/20. Chapter 5 examines COVID-19 socio-economic effects on Cambodian Households in 2020.
Opportunities for Reducing Poverty and Inequality in Costa Rica: World Bank Poverty and Inequality Assessment

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-09-01) World Bank

The purpose of this poverty assessment is to shine a new light on poverty, inequality, and its drivers in Costa Rica. The report provides a descriptive overview of poverty trends in the country and examines why the poorest do not reap the benefits of economic growth. It provides high-level policy directions, i.e., areas that merit a high level of attention according to the results of the analysis and broad implications of the findings for policy makers. The report should be interpreted as a contribution to the debate within Costa Rica on how to improve the country’s model of growth for the benefit of all. It is important to mention at the outset that the analysis presented in this report was completed at the time the conflict in Ukraine started. The conflict is expected to have substantial repercussions in Costa Rica and the rest of the Latin America region. The conflict is expected to hit the poorest hardest, as food and fuel – the prices of which are expected to increase due to the conflict – make up a large part of their consumption. However, these possible implications of the conflict are not reflected in the report.
Progress, Setbacks, and Uncertainty: Effects of COVID-19 and Coup on Poverty in Myanmar

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-07-08) World Bank

This poverty synthesis notes documents Myanmar’s poverty reduction progress leading to the COVID-19 crisis, and setback to these gains brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and coup. The note aims to extract lessons from the Myanmar Poverty Assessment and the World Bank High-Frequency Phone Surveys. Analysis of welfare trends and drivers of poverty changes draws from the Poverty Assessment and covers the period 2005–2017, in line with existing national household surveys. Analysis of COVID-19 and 2021 military coup effects relies on the World Bank High-Frequency Phone Surveys (HFPS) conducted between March 2020 and February 2022. Starting May 2020, seven rounds of the phone survey data have been collected, each with national coverage consisting of a sample of 1,500 households, with the exception of the sixth round. Six survey cover the period May 2020–January 2021 during the pandemic and prior to the military coup, and one covers February 2022, one year after the military takeover on 1 February 2021. Annex one and Annex two provides more details of the survey implementation and respondent profile.
Uganda Poverty Assessment: Strengthening Resilience to Accelerate Poverty Reduction

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-06-27) World Bank

The share of Uganda’s population that lives below the poverty line has fluctuated over the last seven years, greatly influenced by shocks that have tested the resilience of the people. About 30 percent of the country’s population was poor in 2019-20, which is comparable to the poverty rate of 30.7 percent in 2012-13. The pattern of fluctuating poverty rates is largely driven by the experience of rural households. There was a surge in the poverty rate between 2012-13 and 2016-17, linked to the drought in 2016-17, followed by improvement in 2019-20 prior to the pandemic, when favorable weather conditions helped lift rural incomes. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed both urban and rural residents into poverty. Inequality, which reflects the extent to which different population groups benefit from Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, and affects the transmission of growth into poverty reduction, remained largely unchanged over this period and may even have worsened in urban areas. The rest of this overview presents key findings of the report. The next section synthesizes key facts about Uganda’s poverty reduction experience up to 2020. These facts set the stage for the section that follows examining reasons behind limited progress in poverty reduction. The final section reviews the key policy points for action. The report’s analysis is based on new analysis of available data sources as well as published analytical reports such as the Systematic Country Diagnostic Update (World Bank; International Finance Corporation; Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency 2021), the Country Economic Memorandum (World Bank 2022), and the previous Poverty Assessment (World Bank 2016).
From the Last Mile to the Next Mile – 2022 Vietnam Poverty & Equity Assessment

(Washington, DC, 2022) World Bank

Vietnam is a country on the move and in transition. Indicators are pointing in the right direction, with many positive economic and social developments. The amount of progress that Vietnam has achieved in less than half a century since emerging from a war has been nearly without parallel. At the same time, Vietnam is a lower-middle-income country facing a challenging and uncharted road ahead to reaching upper-middle and high-income country levels in a shifting global economic and climatic landscape. In less than half a century since the end of the Vietnam War and thirty-five years since the Doi Moi reforms, Vietnam has become a vibrant economy and a sought-after market to the outside world. At the same time, despite remarkable progress, poverty remains a key concern among the population. Concerns over poverty amid high economic growth are not inconsistent; together they illustrate an absolute and inclusive rise in living standards, but also a population that seeks economic security and aspires for more. This Vietnam poverty and equity assessment is organized into two parts motivated by addressing both Last Mile and Next Mile issues: Part I reviews poverty and inequality trends over the last decade, 2010–2020; and Part II assesses opportunities for and challenges to Vietnam’s path to achieving its Next Mile aspirations and creating greater prosperity for households and workers.
Towards a More Inclusive Zanzibar Economy: Zanzibar Poverty Assessment 2022

(Washington, DC, 2022) World Bank

This report assesses recent progress in poverty reduction in Zanzibar. It is based on Zanzibar’s last three household budget surveys and considers the period between 2009 and 2019, with a focus on the last four years of this decade: 2015–2019. Poverty — based on household consumption — fell by 9 percentage points over the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic: it dropped from 34.9 to 25.7 percent. However, the pace of poverty reduction was slow relative to population growth and as such, the number of poor dropped by only 27,000. The drop was fastest in urban areas and because poverty levels were already lower than in rural areas, the gap between rural and urban poverty widened, driven by differences between the islands of Unguja and Pemba. Simulations suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic increased urban poverty increased by 1.8 percentage points in 2020–21 while rural poverty dropped by 0.8 percentage points.