126,000 Guyanese live on less than $400 a day—UNDP report

Oct 08, 2009 News

An estimated 126,000 Guyanese live on less than US$2 or G$400 a day, the latest United Nations report on human development around the world shows.
According to the Human Development Report, released Monday, 16.8 percent of Guyana’s 750,000 population live on the paltry sum, effectively placing them on the poverty line.
The sum amounts to an estimated $12,000 a month. That’s one-third the pay of the average public servant receives. The report was compiled based on data available from outside of the report’s reference years, namely 2000-2007.
On the Human Poverty Index, Guyana ranks 48 out of a total of 194 countries reviewed for the compilation of the report.
In 2007, Guyanese here received a total of US$278M in remittances from family and friends overseas, the report shows.
Guyana was also ranked on the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Gender-related Development Index (GDI). Out of the 155 countries with both HDI and GDI values, 94 countries have a better rating than Guyana’s.
Each year, since 1990, the Human Development Report has published the HDI which looks beyond GDP to a broader definition of well-being. The HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and gross enrolment in education) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP, income).
The HDI measures average achievements in a country, but it does not incorporate the degree of gender imbalance in these achievements. The gender-related development index, introduced in Human Development Report 1995, measures achievements in the same dimensions using the same indicators as the HDI but captures inequalities in achievement between women and men.
It is simply the HDI adjusted downward for gender inequality. The greater the gender disparity in basic human development, the lower is a country’s GDI relative to its HDI.
Meanwhile, the gender empowerment measure (GEM) reveals whether women take an active part in economic and political life. It tracks the share of seats in parliament held by women; of female legislators, senior officials and managers; and of female professionals and technical workers- and the gender disparity in earned income, reflecting economic independence. Differing from the GDI, the GEM exposes inequality in opportunities in selected areas.
Guyana ranks 53rd out of 109 countries in the GEM.

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126,000 Guyanese live on less than $400 a day—UNDP report

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