GABORONE, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Preliminary findings of a household survey shows that the proportion of people living below poverty line has been declining over the years, from 30.6 percent in 2002/3 to 16.3 percent in 2015/16 in Botswana.
This was revealed by the Statistician General Anna Majelantle in Botswana's capital Gaborone on Thursday.
Majelantle said that the survey was one of the periodic surveys undertaken by Statistics Botswana in discharging its mandate of providing official statistics to facilitate evidence-based planning and decision making.
The survey was conducted over a one-year period from November 2015 to October 2016. The primary objective of the survey was to provide a comprehensive set of indicators for labor market and poverty.
Majelantle added that eradication of extreme poverty continues to be a priority area for the southern African country.
According to Majelantle, the proportion of people living below 1 U.S. dollar a day has also been declining over the years, from 23.4 percent in 2002/3, to 5.8 percent in 2015/16.
She further revealed that the gender disparity in poverty levels which was observed over the previous surveys still persists and it showed that females-headed households constituted more than half (55 percent ) of the poor households.
