Over 200,000 people live in poverty in Fiji: UN report

A United Nations report has revealed more than 200,000 people are living in poverty in Fiji amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The UN's Socio-Economic Impact Assessment Report of the pandemic in Fiji found the pre-Covid-19 poverty rate in the country this year is at 24.2 percent.

The report says the poverty rate is at 16.76 percent (73,153 people) in urban areas and 31.9 percent (138,737 people) in rural areas.

The UN said this showed a large difference in poverty according to the geographic location.

The report said the poverty gap, defined as the ratio showing the average shortfall of the population from the poverty line, stood at 6.6 percent nationally.

This included 4.6 percent and 8.5 percent in urban and rural areas respectively.

The report also highlighted that poverty severity, which was a poverty measure sensitive to the income distribution among the poor, stood at 2.7 percent overall and was 2.13 percent higher in urban areas compared with 3.3 percent in the rural areas.

It stated that exploring demographic differences, children were found to be at higher risk of living in poverty compared with the total population.

The report said the poverty rate for children (0 to 14 years old) stood at 32.1 percent - almost eight percentage points higher than the overall poverty.

It said the rural-urban divide was also prevalent among children with urban child poverty rates at 22.22 percent and rural child poverty rates at 40.92 percent.

The report also found that when looking at the poverty rates geographically, the numbers showed the highest poverty rate for the Northern Division at 29 percent and the lowest for the Central Division at 14 percent .

When looking at demographic household characteristics, the UN said it observed that poverty rates could increase with the household size, the number of children in the household and the household's dependency ratio.