How Do We Determine a Regional Poverty Rate, Southeast Asia for Example?

Many complicated metrics go into determining a poverty rate. Southeast Asia consistently comes in second as a region with the highest percentage of poverty at 15.2%.¹ Sub-Saharan Africa ranks at the top with 40%.² Several international organizations measure and rank the different regions, such as the World Bank, United Nations, UNICEF and Our World in Data, among others.

One tool to help determine poverty rate is World Bank’s PovcalNet tool, which allows organizations and individuals to extract data in different formats with different indicators to measure things surrounding poverty. World Bank states,

“PovcalNet was developed for the sole purpose of public replication of the World Bank’s poverty measures for its widely used international poverty lines, including $1.90 a day and $3.20 a day in 2011 PPP.”

PPP stands for Purchasing Power Parity, which is how much disposable income a household has. The World Bank has established $1.90 or less per day as the benchmark for extreme poverty and $3.20 per day as the next level of poverty.³

The data collected comes from information given by countries on their economies, populations, household incomes and similar metrics. It’s a complicated system involving large amounts of data from countries with different currencies and ways of colleting data. Overall, though, there is more than sufficient information to aggregate the data.

The important thing to note is that both South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have not only held the top two highest percentages of poverty rates but have seen a reversal of any improvement due to the COVID-19 pandemic.⁴ Now is the time to invest in these regions where the most disadvantaged are more vulnerable than ever.