Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. (September 2024). The Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development (MEPyD), as a member of the Interinstitutional Technical Committee for Poverty Measurement (CTP), reported that the general monetary poverty rate in the second quarter of 2024 decreased by 4.45 percentage points (pp) compared to the same period in 2023, to stand at 19.0%.
The data, contained in the “Quarterly bulletin of monetary poverty in the Dominican Republic” corresponding to April-June 2024, highlights that compared to the pre-pandemic period, the reduction in poverty translates into a decrease of 6.9 pp compared to April-June 2019.
The document indicates that the evolution of the general monetary poverty rate in the Dominican Republic shows a notable reduction in both rural and urban areas.
In the urban area, the poverty rate was reduced by 4.4 pp, to go from 23.2% in the second quarter of 2023 to 18.8% in the same period of 2024. Similarly, the rural area experienced a decrease of 4.2 percentage points, to stand at 20.2% in the April-June quarter of this year, reflecting significant progress in poverty reduction in both areas.
When analyzing monetary poverty by sex, the report maintains that the rates, both in men and women, decreased in the second quarter of 2024. It details that in women a drop of 4.5 pp is observed with respect to the same period in 2023 when passing from 24.5% to 20.0%. While men went from 22.3% in the April-June quarter of 2023 to 17.9% in the same period of 2024, representing a drop of 4.4 pp
It highlights that a slight drop is observed in the poverty incidence gap by sex. It specifies that, in the April-July 2023 quarter, the difference between the poverty rate between men and women was 2.2 pp, while in the same period of 2024 it stood at 2.1 pp.
Disaggregated change
The report points out that when disaggregating the change in the interannual results of monetary poverty for the April-June quarter of 2024, it is observed that the total reduction in general monetary poverty of 4.5 pp was due, mainly, to the growth of nominal income per capita of Dominican households, which contributed to the reduction of poverty by 6.8 pp
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