Gender-Sensitive Poverty Mapping for Timor-Leste : Policy Note

Timor-Leste has made impressive progress over the past decade in reducing national poverty levels. Geographically, however, this progress has been highly uneven across the country. In addition, concerns exist regarding gender gaps based on broader...

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Main Author: World Bank
Format: Report
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/143891560928616596/Gender-Sensitive-Poverty-Mapping-for-Timor-Leste-Policy-Note
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32015
id okr-10986-32015
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-320152021-05-25T09:25:38Z Gender-Sensitive Poverty Mapping for Timor-Leste : Policy Note World Bank POVERTY MAP GENDER SMALL AREA ESTIMATION EDUCATION HEALTH LABOR FORCE AGENCY POVERTY RATE Timor-Leste has made impressive progress over the past decade in reducing national poverty levels. Geographically, however, this progress has been highly uneven across the country. In addition, concerns exist regarding gender gaps based on broader socioeconomic dimensions, such as access to economic activities, education, health, and power and agency. In response, the Government of Timor-Leste has set a goal of eradicating extreme poverty by introducing more socially inclusive and gender sensitive policies and programs. However, the existing sex-disaggregated statistics and consumption based poverty estimates resulting from the 2014 Survey of Living Standards only provide district-level disaggregation. This limits the government’s ability to identify and target pockets of extreme poverty and gender disparity across the country below the district level. To address this gap, the World Bank, in close collaboration with the General Directorate of Statistics Timor-Leste, has generated a new set of sex-disaggregated poverty statistics at the village (suco) level. This work takes a more thoughtful approach to gender-sensitive poverty analyses, beyond the usual household headship, by employing individual-level characteristics of education, health, employment, and power and agency. The analyses employ a small-area estimation (SAE) approach to link the data in the 2015 Population and Housing Census with the 2014 Survey of Living Standards and the 2016 Demographic and Health Survey. The suco-level poverty maps confirm an already known pattern that poverty headcount rates are much higher in western areas of the country. The maps also reveal new findings that were not previously known, namely that there is far more variation in poverty rates within than between districts. For example, while the Dili district-level poverty rate is 29 percent, its suco-level rates range from 8 to 80 percent. Analyzing poverty and gender equality by the gender of the household head, female-headed households are less likely to be poor than those headed by males. However, if poverty and genderequality are assessed using spatially disaggregated evidence of five individual-level gender indicators (education, health, labor force, and power and agency), two interesting patterns emerge. First, poorer areas have higher levels of abuse and domestic violence against women, and females are at a greater educational disadvantage, despite narrowing gaps in the literacy rate among school-aged children and school enrollment. Second, there is an inverse relationship between gender-related labor force gaps and poverty rates: the prevalence of a female labor force disadvantage is higher in more economically developed sucos. However, women do not appear to be disadvantaged in terms of health measures and this pattern has no correlation with poverty. Poverty does not appear to be related to women’s autonomy to make decisions. The overall findings suggest the importance of using sex-disaggregated individual level analysis, beyond the male/female household headship, to better assess poverty of women and men and gender disparity. This analysis goes beyond traditional consumption-based poverty analysis by integrating a gender dimension to better capture the standard-of-living and gender disparities in the country. These findings can be used to inform the design of policies and programs that target poverty at the suco level, and to improve resource allocation designed to raise the living standards of the poor, balance the targeting of poor areas and poor people, and close gender gaps in the five dimensions studied here. The poverty maps could also provide a cost-effective way to add value to existing census and survey data, and also serve as a substitute for fielding expensive new censuses or surveys. 2019-07-02T18:46:43Z 2019-07-02T18:46:43Z 2019-05 Report http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/143891560928616596/Gender-Sensitive-Poverty-Mapping-for-Timor-Leste-Policy-Note http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32015 English CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Economic & Sector Work :: Policy Note Economic & Sector Work East Asia and Pacific Timor-Leste
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic POVERTY MAP
GENDER
SMALL AREA ESTIMATION
EDUCATION
HEALTH
LABOR FORCE
AGENCY
POVERTY RATE
spellingShingle POVERTY MAP
GENDER
SMALL AREA ESTIMATION
EDUCATION
HEALTH
LABOR FORCE
AGENCY
POVERTY RATE
World Bank
Gender-Sensitive Poverty Mapping for Timor-Leste : Policy Note
geographic_facet East Asia and Pacific
Timor-Leste
format Report
author World Bank
author_facet World Bank
author_sort World Bank
title Gender-Sensitive Poverty Mapping for Timor-Leste : Policy Note
title_short Gender-Sensitive Poverty Mapping for Timor-Leste : Policy Note
title_full Gender-Sensitive Poverty Mapping for Timor-Leste : Policy Note
title_fullStr Gender-Sensitive Poverty Mapping for Timor-Leste : Policy Note
title_full_unstemmed Gender-Sensitive Poverty Mapping for Timor-Leste : Policy Note
title_sort gender-sensitive poverty mapping for timor-leste : policy note
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2019
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/143891560928616596/Gender-Sensitive-Poverty-Mapping-for-Timor-Leste-Policy-Note
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32015
_version_ 1764475559746732032
description Timor-Leste has made impressive progress over the past decade in reducing national poverty levels. Geographically, however, this progress has been highly uneven across the country. In addition, concerns exist regarding gender gaps based on broader socioeconomic dimensions, such as access to economic activities, education, health, and power and agency. In response, the Government of Timor-Leste has set a goal of eradicating extreme poverty by introducing more socially inclusive and gender sensitive policies and programs. However, the existing sex-disaggregated statistics and consumption based poverty estimates resulting from the 2014 Survey of Living Standards only provide district-level disaggregation. This limits the government’s ability to identify and target pockets of extreme poverty and gender disparity across the country below the district level. To address this gap, the World Bank, in close collaboration with the General Directorate of Statistics Timor-Leste, has generated a new set of sex-disaggregated poverty statistics at the village (suco) level. This work takes a more thoughtful approach to gender-sensitive poverty analyses, beyond the usual household headship, by employing individual-level characteristics of education, health, employment, and power and agency. The analyses employ a small-area estimation (SAE) approach to link the data in the 2015 Population and Housing Census with the 2014 Survey of Living Standards and the 2016 Demographic and Health Survey. The suco-level poverty maps confirm an already known pattern that poverty headcount rates are much higher in western areas of the country. The maps also reveal new findings that were not previously known, namely that there is far more variation in poverty rates within than between districts. For example, while the Dili district-level poverty rate is 29 percent, its suco-level rates range from 8 to 80 percent. Analyzing poverty and gender equality by the gender of the household head, female-headed households are less likely to be poor than those headed by males. However, if poverty and genderequality are assessed using spatially disaggregated evidence of five individual-level gender indicators (education, health, labor force, and power and agency), two interesting patterns emerge. First, poorer areas have higher levels of abuse and domestic violence against women, and females are at a greater educational disadvantage, despite narrowing gaps in the literacy rate among school-aged children and school enrollment. Second, there is an inverse relationship between gender-related labor force gaps and poverty rates: the prevalence of a female labor force disadvantage is higher in more economically developed sucos. However, women do not appear to be disadvantaged in terms of health measures and this pattern has no correlation with poverty. Poverty does not appear to be related to women’s autonomy to make decisions. The overall findings suggest the importance of using sex-disaggregated individual level analysis, beyond the male/female household headship, to better assess poverty of women and men and gender disparity. This analysis goes beyond traditional consumption-based poverty analysis by integrating a gender dimension to better capture the standard-of-living and gender disparities in the country. These findings can be used to inform the design of policies and programs that target poverty at the suco level, and to improve resource allocation designed to raise the living standards of the poor, balance the targeting of poor areas and poor people, and close gender gaps in the five dimensions studied here. The poverty maps could also provide a cost-effective way to add value to existing census and survey data, and also serve as a substitute for fielding expensive new censuses or surveys.