Samoa’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) Report released by the Samoa Bureau of Statistics or SBS using the 2018 Household Income and Expenditure Survey data, it was estimated that 24.9% or a quarter of Samoa’s population is multidimensionally poor.
The report released yesterday evening was prepared by the SBS) in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) with technical assistance and support provided by the Oxford Poverty Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
This is the first report of this nature, providing a detailed description of the various dimensions and indicators to complement existing monetary poverty estimates.
The main objective of this report is to identify and monitor key simultaneous disadvantages that affect poor people multidimensionally both at the national and regional levels.
The average intensity of deprivation, which reflects the share of deprivations each poor person experiences on average, is 43.9%.
In other words, each multidimensionally poor person is on average deprived in 43.9% of the 12 weighted indicators.
This can occur, for instance, if a person is deprived in two indicators in the health dimension, plus two indicators in the education dimension and one in the living standard dimension.
Samoa’s MPI, which is the product of the percentage of poor people and the average intensity of poverty, stands at 0.109.
This indicates that poor people in Samoa experience 10.9% of the deprivations that would be experienced if all people were deprived in all indicators.
Furthermore, urban poverty (made up of the Apia Urban Area (AUA region) is reported to be 11.4% while rural poverty (made up of the North West Upolu (NWU), Rest of Upolu (ROU) and Sav (Savai’i) regions is reported to be 28.1%.
In terms of the percentage contribution of each of the 12 indicators, the largest contribution comes from food security (18.4%) followed by the main source of drinking water (16.2%) and internet connection (12.1%).
When aggregating the indicators by dimensions, the largest contribution is due to living standard deprivations reporting Samoa’s Multidimensional Poverty Index 2022 IX 41.6%.
The health and education dimensions contributed 37.9% and 20.5% respectively, to overall multidimensional poverty.
More from this report in later editions.
