Pverty

Statistic Analysis Carlette and I will be giving you an estimate of the percentage of the population below the poverty line, the indigent line, and other poverty measures mainly the poverty gap, the severity of poverty and the Gini coefficient. The poverty measures were disaggregated by selected socio-economic factors including geographical area, ethnicity, sex and age group. We will also be focusing on the gender of the head of household, children, youth, the elderly and the working poor. Looking at the Chart(Figure 2-1) This chart shows that 33.5% of the population was below the poverty line and 10.8% were below the indigent line. This means that one in every three persons was poor i.e. not able to meet basic food and non-food costs, while one in every nine persons was very poor or not able to meet basic food cost. This level of poverty was relatively high. The "income gap ratio" measures the mean depth of poverty as a proportion of the poverty line (Ravallion, M. 1992.37). The ratio reflects "the percentage shortfall of the average income of the poor from the poverty line" (Sen, 1981), and therefore gives an idea of the income needed to bring the poor up to the poverty line. The poverty gap, which measures the average distance between the poor and the poverty line, was 11.1% (as you can see on the chart) This implies that it would cost 11.1% of the poverty line to move each poor person out of poverty and close the gap between the poor and non-poor. The main objective of a poverty elimination/reduction strategy is to move the poor and vulnerable non-poor to a comfortable point above the poverty line. This would provide some cushion so that if they were to experience any economic shock they would not easily revert to poverty.

The rate of poverty in rural areas (44.2%) was much higher compared to urban areas (23.7%). Our survey reveal that residents from Port Loyola, Collect and Lake Independence on south side Belize City do not have access to some basic...