NEW PUBLICATION: REVIEWING DRC’S POVERTY ESTIMATES, 2005-2012: UNPRECEDENTED GDP GROWTH WITHOUT TRICKLE DOWN

New report: Reviewing DRC’s poverty estimates, 2005-2012: Unprecedented GDP growth without trickle down, edited by Wim Marivoet, Tom De Herdt and John Ulimwengu, March 2019.

The first decade of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) post-conflict reconstruction period (2004-2013) was marked by unprecedented economic growth in per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of 3-4% per year, but was this ‘peace dividend’ translated into widespread poverty reduction within the Congolese population? We answer this research question by focusing on the percentage of people in poverty (or poverty headcounts) using two national household surveys: the first was conducted in 2004-2005, right before the 2006 elections that inaugurated the first post-conflict government; and the second was carried out in 2012-2013.

Both the Institut National de la Statistique (INS) and the World Bank estimate very high poverty rates; and both point to a significant decrease in poverty between the two survey periods. The problem with both estimates, however, is that they cannot be replicated. When we applied the INS’s methodology from 2005 to the 2012 survey, we found that the percentage of people in poverty substantially increased from 72% to 81%. This is in sharp contrast to the INS’s own reported results, and also runs counter to what we know about the evolution of the DRC’s economy. To produce more accurate poverty estimates and trends, we, therefore, reviewed the INS methodology in various respects. Our proposal’s most salient feature is the high degree of spatial precision, which, in our view, is warranted given the deeply fragmented character of economic markets and livelihoods in the DRC.

Based on the revised methodology, and in line with both INS and World Bank estimates, our findings suggest that two-thirds of the DRC population are poor. This is a staggering figure, especially given that the measure of poverty adopted essentially pegs poverty to insufficient food intake. Furthermore, the percentage of people in poverty overall did not significantly change between 2005 and 2012. In other words, the decade of unprecedented economic growth in GDP did not visibly translate into increased consumption for the bottom two-thirds of the population. This finding contradicts both INS and World Bank estimates of a significant reduction in poverty in that period. And finally, there are important regional differences: poverty decreased spectacularly (by 18 percentage points) in Kinshasa but it increased in other cities and towns as well as in the countryside.