Poverty, vulnerability and inequality in Namibia: an estimation of recent trends

Abstract

Poverty and inequality are pervasive in Namibia. Recent developments – particularly the economic downturn of 2016, the lingering effects of prolonged drought and the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, all of which deepened the economic contraction, as well as rising inflation – have adversely affect ed efforts to reduce poverty, vulnerability and inequality. The aggregate impact that recent crises have had on poverty, vulnerability and inequality is assessed in the present report. Since no Namibia Household Income and Expenditure Survey has been carried out since the 2015/16 Survey, the imputed elasticity approach is used in the present report to generate estimates of recent levels of poverty, vulnerability and inequality in the absence of recent household data. In the approach used, which considers the impact of shocks, values were imputed based on data from the Namibia Household Income and Expenditure Survey of 2015/16 and an assessment of poverty, vulnerability and inequality from 2017 to 2023. The report thus provides estimates of the number of people living in poverty and the number at risk of falling into poverty. It also provides an assessment of income and wealth inequality and includes a discussion of the determinants of inequality and the impact of current national and global crises on poverty and inequality in Namibia. The present report describes the use of an innovative imputed elasticity approach to update the latest household consumption data from Namibia (from 2015/16) and to estimate poverty and inequality for the six-year period from 2017 to 2023. The results showed that poverty had increased since the previous Namibia Household Income and Expenditure Survey, published in 2017.