According to the report by Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), the number of Ugandans falling into poverty and those who have remained poor is bigger than the number of those that have lifted themselves from poverty since 2016.
This was revealed during the launch of the National Panel Survey and the poverty maps of Uganda by Uganda Bureau of statistic on Thursday.
The National Panel Survey 2018/19 indicates that 8.4% of Ugandans who were not poor by 2016 became poor by 2019 while 8.5% who were poor remained poor, 10.5% came out of their poverty and 75.6% who were not poor maintained their status.
This means the number of Ugandans who remained poor is 17% compared to the 10.5% who managed to live their status from poverty.
James Muwonge, the director social economic survey said “Those who have consistently remained poor are those who either have very low level of education or have no education at all and so what they engage in, they are not even able to benefit from different programmes.”
Stephen Baryahirwa, the principal statistics director of surveys UBOS said the poverty mapping exercise using 2014 National Housing and population census and 2016/17 national household survey shows how the regions are faring.
“Eastern, Central and Western region including Kampala though the poverty levels are low, poverty increased between 12,13 ,16 and 17 while in the Northern region poverty reduced,” Baryahirwa said.
The poverty maps of Uganda also showed that poverty in children is higher than in the general population.
“Poor households tend to have many children, so if you pull out from the sample, we want to look at them separately definitely they will be more children compared to the general population that are coming from the poor households, “he said.
The study shows that many households continue to get poorer signalling the needs to shift the discussion towards addressing income equality.