Publication: Botswana Poverty Assessment: Renewing Pathways for Poverty and Inequality Reduction
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2024-07-31
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2024-07-31
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Botswana’s fast diamond-based growth, significant public investment, and political stability catapulted it into a stable upper-middle-income country and improved living standards. Despite its income status, the country faces multiple data challenges that limit its ability to make informed and effective policy decisions. The challenges include the availability, quality, and use of data, and a weak statistical infrastructure. Botswana does not conduct frequent income and expenditure surveys to track poverty. Using the available data, this poverty assessment presents poverty estimates up to 2016, preliminary poverty projections based on imputations into the 2019-2022 quarterly data and recent labor market trends. It also uses satellite and geospatial data to understand recent trends in electricity access and rainfall shocks after the negative poverty impact of the 2015 drought and electricity and water crises. Looking ahead, a recently completed Population and Housing Census and the upcoming 2024-2025 income and expenditure survey will fill other important data gaps. Yet, evidence-based policymaking requires Botswana to act on its commitment to invest in frequent, timely, and relevant data across its statistical system and strengthen its monitoring and evaluation.
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“World Bank. 2024. Botswana Poverty Assessment: Renewing Pathways for Poverty and Inequality Reduction. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/41979 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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