Proceedings of the 13th Meeting of the
COMCEC Poverty Alleviation Working Group
3
Dr. AŞIK continued her presentation with poverty situation in the world. The last three decades
witnessed a significant global poverty reduction. The global poverty headcount ratio fell to 10% in
2015 from 35.9% in 1990. Regarding income groups, while this ratio was 41.8 percent for upper-
middle income countries, 44.8 percent for lower-middle income countries and 60.6 percent for low-
income countries in 1990, these ratios fell to 1.7 percent, 13.9 percent and 43.9 percent for these
income groups respectively in 2015.
With regards to non-monetary poverty indicators, she first touched upon the HDI. Dr. AŞIK
expressed that human development category is strongly correlated with income per capita. 52 out
of 59 “very high human development” countries are high-income countries, and the “high human
development” category is dominated by upper-middle-income countries. Similarly, “medium
human development” category is dominated by lower-middle income countries. In the “low human
development category”, all of the countries are from low income or lower middle-income groups.
Regarding Multidimensional Poverty Index, she stated that the index was calculated for 110
countries in Human Development Report 2018. Trends in MPI show that poverty is on decline,
however there is still significant need for progress. Almost 1.3 billion people in these countries live
in multidimensional poverty.
Since 2000, significant progress has been made in the fight against hunger. The 2000 Global Hunger
Index (GHI) score was 30 for the developing world, while the 2018 GHI score was 20.9. Despite the
lower hunger level reflected by the 2018 global GHI score, the number of hungry people in the
world remains unacceptably high. According to GHI, 52 countries are still in serious, alarming or
extremely alarming situation.
Dr. AŞIK continued her presentation with the state of poverty in the OIC. She pointed out that the
OIC represents a highly diverse group in terms of GDP per capita, which varies from 1017 dollars
to 128.4 thousand dollars (i.e. Niger and Qatar). The GDP per capita in upper-middle OIC Countries
has a diverse pattern. While this indicator is $8,163 in Guyana, it reaches to $29,431 in Malaysia.
Malaysia, Turkey and Kazakhstan have high GDP per capita values compared to the rest of the
group. In the lower-middle income group, GDP per capita levels vary between $3,694 and $12,284.
In the low-income group, GDP per capita levels vary between $1017 and $3,180. One third of these
countries have GDP per capita levels, which are lower than $1,600, namely, Niger, Mozambique,
Sierra Leone, Comoros, Togo and Yemen. Similarly, the poverty headcount ratio varies remarkably
among the OICMember Countries. The number of people who live under $1.9 a day in the OIC region
is approximately 241 million. In terms of monetary poverty, there is no poor in the high-income
countries. The poverty rate is generally low in the upper-middle income countries. Lower-Middle
income countries display a highly diverse picture and poverty headcount ratio ranges from 1% in
Palestine to 53.5% in Nigeria.
As to the multidimensional poverty, Dr. AŞIK stated that according to Human Development Report
(HDR) 2018, among the OIC Member Countries, for which multidimensional poverty headcount
ratio is calculated, this ratio is highest in Niger and lowest in Turkmenistan.