Barbados Government Launches Country Assessment to Determine Poverty Line by January

Government is seeking to establish Barbados’ true poverty line by next January.

The Country Assessment of Living Conditions will be rolled out on July 1 and last until year-end. The initiative was launched Monday on the first floor lecture theatre of the Warrens Office Complex, St Michael.

It will be conducted by the Ministry of People’s Empowerment in partnership with the Caribbean Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank as well as the Barbados Statistical Department.

Minister of People Empowerment Kirk Humphrey said similar assessments had been done in the past but they were happening too few and far between with no action being taken afterwards.

“Caribbean countries have a history and very unfortunate record of not having adequate data. There’s a dearth of important information on a lot of important topics. Therefore, decisions can’t be made and then when we are assessed, we are assessed on the information we do not have. The last poverty study was in 2016 . . . we do not know what the data will tell us now but we need to know so we can make informed decisions. In the intervening years, I have had some concerns that a lot of the data that should be used to make decisions are not being used [appropriately]. Caribbean governments are very good at collecting information and not doing anything with it,” he said.

The minister said the information gathered would be vital to inform governmental socio-economic policies so could not be allowed to gather dust on a shelf.

“It cannot be made up conjecture or gut feeling interpretations of reality. It must be scientific and evidence-based, which must in turn be expressed as a true representation of what people are dealing with in this country. We cannot be running around shooting in the dark, [we need] evidence-based data to inform decision-making.

“We are saying we want to have that data to allow the ministry and Government to make the kind of decisions we need to make,” he said.

The assessment will take the form of a survey using 35 enumerators targeting 2 800 households. Humphrey said he recognised many people were tired of surveys but urged Barbadians to cooperate due to the importance of the data, asking them to be “nice” and to respond to the questions “with grace” as the end goal was the improvement of people’s lives.

Humphrey also spoke on the upcoming amalgamation of Government’s social services. He said they had an idea of what the final version should look like and settled on the first set of satellite offices. He said once trade union negotiations were settled, the new entity should be in operation within a few months.

The Country Assessment of Living Conditions will include determining the minimum income a household needs to meet its basic consumption and non-consumption needs; help the Government understand the dynamic link between poor living conditions and education, health, household size and employment; encapsulate the voices of citizens, and take on board their recommendations to improve living conditions and allow Barbados to track progress towards national-level goals and even international social development agreements such as the Sustainable Development Goals. (CA)