The projected poverty rates in 2020 are similar to those in 2017; hence, the impacts of COVID-19 are expected to set back progress toward ending extreme poverty by at least three years, according to the biennial Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report. The World Bank Group report estimated that Sub-Saharan Africa would be the next most affected region, with between 26 million and 40 million additional people predicted to be pushed into extreme poverty.
Overall, some 72 million of the projected new poor in the baseline scenario will be in middle-income countries—more than four fifths of the total new poor. When applying the higher regional poverty thresholds appropriate for lower-middle- income countries (US$3.20 a day) and upper-middle-income countries (US$5.50 a day), the poverty impact of COVID-19 will be much greater.
The COVID-19 crisis has also diminished shared prosperity defined as the growth in the income of the poorest 40 percent of a country’s population. Average global shared prosperity is estimated to stagnate or even contract over 2019-2021 due to the reduced growth in average incomes.
The deceleration in economic activity intensified by the pandemic is likely to hit the poorest people especially hard, and this could lead to even lower shared prosperity indicators in coming years.
The report calls for collective action to ensure years of progress in poverty reduction are not erased, and that efforts to confront poverty caused by COVID-19 also face threats that disproportionally impact the world’s poor at the same time, particularly conflict and climate change. This exercise, according to the report takes for each economy the latest two comparable survey-year observations, calculates the difference in headcounts between the two periods, and divides that difference by the number of years between the two observations. The lag between the two survey years can be as large as 10 years, as in Angola and Kenya, or as small as 2 years in Liberia and Madagascar.
Moreover, the latest year of available data is 2009 in Mali and 2018 in Angola and Sierra Leone. The average yearly changes in poverty headcounts are as follows: Guinea (−4.8), Chad (−3.1), Republic of Congo (−2.8), Democratic Republic of Congo (−2.1), Eswatini (−1.9), Niger (−1.7), Sierra Leone (−1.7), Namibia (−1.6), Zambia(−1.4), Mozambique (−1.0), Togo (−0.9), Benin (−0.9), Burundi (−0.8), Cameroon (−0.8), Mauritania (−0.8), Kenya (−0.7), Mali (−0.5), Ethiopia (−0.5), Rwanda (−0.4), Botswana (−0.4), Madagascar (−0.4), Malawi (−0.2), Côte d’Ivoire (−0.08), Mauritius (−0.07), Tanzania (−0.04), Senegal (0.04), Ghana (0.34), South Africa (0.6), Liberia (1.3), Uganda (1.4), Angola (1.7), and Zimbabwe (2.1).
According to the report, poverty rate at the US$1.90-a-day poverty line, for Sierra Leone with a survey year of 2018, there are 3.3 million number of poor, a poverty rate of 43.0%, poverty gap of 11.7% and a ratio of poverty gap to poverty rate of 27.2%.
For individuals in households deprived in the under mentioned indicators for Sierra Leone, multidimensional poverty headcount ratio is 61.7%, monetary 43.0%, educational attainment 28.7%, educational enrolment 18.7%, electricity 68.7%, sanitation 87.2% and drinking water 33.8%.
By Zainab Iyamide Joaque