For over three decades, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has performed measurements of poverty in the Latin American countries in order to estimate its prevalence in the region using a common methodology. Economic and social changes have prompted an update of the thresholds used to quantify poverty and a review of certain aspects of the methodology.
Now that all the countries of the region have progressed towards having official poverty measurements calculated by their own public agencies, the figures produced by ECLAC aim to provide a regional overview that …
The countries participating in the tenth meeting of the Statistical Conference of the Americas of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reaffirmed today their commitment to statistical development through cooperation with the regional and international statistics community, at the closing session of the gathering held on November 19-21 in Santiago, Chile.
At the meeting, the countries agreed on the need to seek a collaborative regional response to the demand for official statistics that support the formulation of policies with an empirical basis that contributes t…
Countries are increasingly interested in having an official multidimensional poverty index (MPI). This is the expression of a growing consensus regarding the limitations of income poverty measures as standalone indicator. This paper analyses the challenges in designing such indices. Specifically, it addresses the selection of the unit of identification, the selection of dimensions and indicators, including the issue of missing values and the debate on whether to include an indicator of monetary deprivation or not, the weighting structure and the poverty cutoff. In general, for all the reviewed…
Statisticians from the statistical offices of over twenty Caribbean countries and overseas territories will soon be equipped with increased capacity in census planning, management and implementation. A four-day workshop organised by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in collaboration with the Secretariat for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), will take place in Kingston, Jamaica, from 8 to 11 April 2019.
Caribbean statistical offices will be carrying out population and housing censuses between 2020 and 2022…
The United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics (UNFPOS) are considered the basic framework that National Statistical Systems (NSS) must observe in order to produce high quality, independent statistics that support informed decision-making and public confidence in government.
The UNFPOS were first adopted in 1994 by the United Nations Statistical Commission. These principles were subsequently endorsed by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 2013 and the United Nations General Assembly in 2014. Statistical laws in the Caribbean have lagged in incorporating…