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 decreased significantly 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, as per the Bulletin of Official Monetary Poverty Statistics 2023 in the Dominican Republic.
The bulletin specifies that extreme poverty also decreased from 3.8% in 2022 to 3.2% in 2023, a reduction of 0.6 percentage points.
The publication points out 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.
The Ozama, North or Cibao, and South macro-regions experienced interannual reductions in poverty of 5.5, 5.1, and 4.9 percentage points, respectively.
The Eastern macroregion reduced monetary poverty to a lesser extent, from 24.5% in 2022 to 23.6% in 2023, a reduction of 0.9 percentage points.
Breakdowns by sex show decreases for both men and women, with women benefiting the most from the reduction.
The percentage of women in monetary poverty decreased from 29.4% in 2022 to 24.1% in 2023, an interannual reduction of 5.3 percentage points; the 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 in 2023, a decrease of 1.3 percentage points.