Rabat – Morocco has emerged as one of the 25 countries that successfully halved multidimensional poverty over the past 15 years, according to the latest report by the United Nations Development Programmer (UNDP).
Released this week, the 2023 edition of the Global Index report underscores Morocco’s remarkable progress in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), demonstrating the effectiveness of poverty-alleviation efforts the country carried out between 2011 and 2018.
Developed with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford, the report’s analysis of trends from 2000 to 2022 focused on 81 countries, including Morocco.
While commending the significant progress Morocco has made in reducing poverty and raising living standards, the report also pointed out that the lack of comprehensive data on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts “complicates the assessment of the immediate outlook.”
In addition to the North African kingdom, a significant improvement in poverty reduction was also observed in Congo (0.112), India (0,069), and Indonesia (0.014).
In Morocco, the population in a country of severe multidimensional poverty amounts to 1,4%, while those exposed to this phenomenon represent 10.9%, the report documented, adding that substantial poverty reduction took place in the country between 2011 and 2018.
This index takes into account three essential dimensions: health, education, and standard of living. The indicators analyzed focus on nutrition, infant mortality, years of schooling, school attendance, school enrolment, poverty intensity, access to drinking water, electricity, housing, sanitation, professional activity, and fuel for household use. The identification of these data is used in particular to guide the policies of the member states in the fight against the everyday aspects of poverty.
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Despite significant progress in 25 countries, mainly 1.1 billion of 6.1 billion people worldwide, or just over 18 percent, still live in acute multidimensional poverty, the report said.
It further indicates that at the regional level, sub-Saharan countries remain the most affected, with 534 million people, as well as South Asia, with a total of 389 million people. These two regions “are home to nearly five out of six people affected by poverty,” the report detailed, stressing that “nearly two-thirds of the world, or 730 million people, live in middle-income countries.”
The UNDP report also highlighted the centrality of employment as a vital response to reduce poverty around the world, particularly in these countries.
“Although middle-income countries account for only 10% of the population included in the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index, they are the regions where 35% of all poor people reside,” the UNDP stressed in a summary of its latest index.
