Denver Isaacs
19 November 2008
ALMOST a third - 28 per cent - of Namibian households are now classified as poor, with 13 per cent labelled as severely poor, according to the latest review of poverty and inequality in the country that was launched yesterday.
The review, launched by the Central Bureau of Statistics as part of the annual Africa Statistics Day celebrations, once again places Namibia among the most unequal and polarised societies in the world as far as income distribution is concerned, despite the country's middle-income status.
The most telling result of the new report is its identification of education as a critical factor in addressing poverty.
Among Namibians with no formal education, 50 per cent were found to be poor and 26,7 per cent severely poor.
The situation shows improvement as education levels rise, with 12.6 per cent of those who finished high school classified as poor and 5.1 per cent as severely poor.
"Poverty among those who hold a tertiary degree is virtually non-existent," the report reads, noting that of all poor households identified countrywide, 83,5 per cent have a head of household that has either no formal education or has only completed primary school.
The guest speaker at the launch, United Nations Resident Co-ordinator Simon Nhongo, said the new report shows a threefold increase in the number of severely poor households compared to the previous year.
This steep rise is however attributed to a change in methodology.
NEW DEFINITION Previously, the official poverty line was defined using a household's relative expenditure on food compared to its total expenditure.
Using this previous method, a family was considered poor if food expenditure made up 60 per cent or more of its total spending.
A severely poor household was classified as one where food expenditure made up 80 per cent or more of total household spending.
This method, known as the "food-share" method, has come under increasing attack by researchers, who argue that it is too simplistic.
Most recently, the Basic Income Grant (BIG) Coalition took issue with a review of its current pilot programme in the Otjivero settlement at Omitara by the research organisation Nepru.
The new method, which the Bureau says has become more widely used in the SADC region and other developing countries, is called the Cost of Basic Needs (CBN) approach.
In terms of this, a national poverty line is first set by computing the cost of a food basket that would enable a household to meet a minimum nutritional requirement, and then adding an allowance for the consumption of basic non-food items.
"The report argues convincingly that the new method is more robust and better at identifying the poor, which is important for monitoring.
It should also facilitate poverty comparisons across countries in the region and give us a better grip on how different interventions aimed at reducing poverty can be applied in different settings," Nhongo said.
The report goes further in assessing the relationship between poverty and a number of other social indicators such as sex and age, locality and administrative region, and language groups.
Based on this, female-headed households showed a higher poverty incidence than male-headed ones, with 30,4 per cent of the first classified as poor compared to 25,8 per cent of the latter.
Households with heads aged 30 to 34 showed the least incidence of poverty - with 17,9 per cent classified as poor and 7,5 per cent as severely poor.
The most poverty-stricken age group is 65 plus, with a poor percentage of 47,5 and a severely poor percentage of 22,7.
"One hypothesis that could explain the differences in poverty levels by age groups is that those in the ages 25 to 39 are more likely to hold salaried jobs, which in turn is associated with a lower probability of household poverty.
"Moreover, at higher age levels household heads are often reliant on a pension as a main income source, which in turn is an important determinant of higher probability of the household being poor," the review reads.
Rural areas show a 38,2 per cent incidence of poverty compared to 12 per cent in urban areas.
Among the regions, the Kavango Region showed the highest rate of people classified as poor, at 56,5 per cent, and 36,7 per cent classed severely poor.
Poverty incidences are lowest in the Khomas and Erongo regions, at 6,3 and 10,3 per cent respectively.
The report used expenditure data from the 2003 / 2004 Namibia Household Income and Expenditure Survey for its assessment.
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