CDB launches poverty assessment programme

WHILE policymakers across the Caribbean require timely, accurate and reliable poverty data to improve national and regional development initiatives, countries are failing to give frequent updates or reports on key poverty indicators and are not able to assess the non-income dimensions of poverty and human development.

 

In a bid to address this, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) launched a programme designed to improve the way its 19 Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs) assess poverty and gain access to data from these assessments.

 

“The Enhanced Country Poverty Assessment Programme launched today responds to the pressing need for high-quality data on poverty. Understanding the causes of poverty, who it affects and how it affects them is at the core of making informed, evidence-based policy decisions and helping Caribbean countries make meaningful, measurable progress in reducing and ending poverty,” said Deidre Clarendon, Division Chief, Social Sector Division, CDB.

 

Launched earlier this week, CDB is supporting the five-year programme through a total investment of US$4.1 million. 

 

Set to enhance the capacity of CDB’s BMCs to conduct multidimensional poverty assessments, with measurements considering how poor people experience poverty going beyond income considerations, while taking into account other deprivations – of education, health, housing, empowerment, personal security, and more, it is expected that through the programme, some countries will either adopt multidimensional poverty measurements as stand-alone studies or integrate it into existing national surveys.

 

Specifically, the Bank’s BMCs in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) will receive support for the implementation of a Sustainable Household Data Programme (SDP), which the OECS Commission will oversee. This SDP will deliver harmonised poverty data for OECS countries, and help them conduct regular and timely monetary and multidimensional poverty assessments. An OECS Geographic Information System platform will also be developed through the programme. It will enable countries to better analyse, map, monitor and report on different dimensions of social and economic well-being.

 

The new Enhanced Country Poverty Assessment Programme will support: Anguilla; Antigua and Barbuda; The Bahamas; Barbados; Belize; the British Virgin Islands; Cayman Islands; Dominica; Grenada; Guyana; Haiti; Jamaica; Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia; Suriname; St. Vincent and the Grenadines; Trinidad and Tobago; and Turks and Caicos Islands.