COMCEC Poverty Outlook 2019
4
Despite a sustained acceleration on the income levels of the countries, some countries cannot
benefit from that acceleration. To understand the extent of this disparity, non-monetary
indicators of poverty are needed to be examined.
1.1.2. Non-Monetary Poverty
Human Development Index
Observing the human development categories and the income levels of the countries together, it
is seen that for most of the cases the income level of a country is in parallel with its human
development category. Indeed, as seen in the Table 1, 86.2 percent of the countries that is in ‘very
high human development category’ have high income levels. On the other hand, 70.1 percent of
the countries that is in ‘low human development category’ have low income levels, while 28.9
percent of the countries in the same category have lower-middle income8 .
Table 1: Income Levels of the Different Categories of Human Development
Low
income
Lower-
middle
income
Upper-
middle
income
High
income Total
Low human
development
# of countries 27 11 0 0 38
% 70.1% 28.9% 0% 0% 100.0%
Medium
human
development
# of countries 2 30 6 0 38
% 5.3% 78.9% 15.8% 0% 100.0%
High human
development
# of countries 0 5 42 6 53
% 0% 9.4% 79.2% 11.3% 100.0%
Very high
human
development
# of countries 0 0 8 50 58
% 0% 0% 13.8% 86.2% 100.0%
Source: Own calculations from UNDP (2018).
Multidimensional Poverty Index
Among the countries for which multidimensional poverty index is available; 1.96 percent consists
of high income, 28.43 percent is upper-middle, 41.18 percent is lower-middle and 28.43 percent
is low income countries . The MPI value ranges from 0.001 (Ukraine) to 0.59 (Niger).
8 See Annex 5 for the full list related to the HDI values of the countries.