Dominican government reports 4.7% decrease in monetary poverty in 2023

Santo Domingo.– The Ministry of Economy, Planning, and Development (MEPyD) reported on Sunday that monetary poverty decreased by 4.7 percentage points in 2023.

“In 2023, national monetary poverty significantly decreased from 27.7% in 2022 to 23.0% in 2023, indicating positive progress in improving the general economic conditions of the population” compared to 2022, according to the 2023 Bulletin of Official Monetary Poverty Statistics in the Dominican Republic.

The bulletin specifies that extreme poverty also decreased, from 3.8% in 2022 to 3.2% in 2023, for a reduction of 0.6 percentage points.

The publication states that the decrease in general poverty in the country was mainly female and rural. Poverty in rural areas decreased from 30.9% to 24.6%. Meanwhile, poverty in urban areas decreased from 27.0% in 2022 to 22.7% in 2023.

In turn, it details that, at the level of territorial divisions, the Ozama, Norte or Cibao, and Sur macro-regions experienced year-on-year poverty reductions of 5.5, 5.1, and 4.9 percentage points, respectively.

The East macro-region reduced monetary poverty to a lesser extent, from 24.5% in 2022 to 23.6% in 2023, a reduction of 0.9 percentage points.

Likewise, the disaggregations by sex also show decreases for both men and women, with the latter being the most benefited from this reduction.

In this regard, it is noteworthy that the percentage of women in monetary poverty decreased from 29.4% in 2022 to 24.1% in 2023, for a year-on-year reduction of 5.3 percentage points; this reduction for men was 4.0 percentage points, from 25.8% in 2022 to 21.8% in 2023.

The poverty gap between men and women decreased from 3.6 percentage points in 2022 to 2.3 percentage points, narrowing by 1.3 percentage points.