Gabon Poverty Assessment

Gabon's abundant endowment of natural resources, its strategic location, political stability, high urbanization, and youthful population create a broad but challenging development space for poverty reduction and shared prosperity. Immediately after independence the benefits of the oil boom prop...

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Main Author: World Bank
Format: Report
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33429
id okr-10986-33429
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-334292021-05-25T10:54:41Z Gabon Poverty Assessment World Bank POVERTY RATE POVERTY TRENDS SHARED PROSPERITY INEQUALITY SOCIAL INCLUSION SPATIAL ANALYSIS LIVING STANDARDS ASSET OWNERSHIP SOCIAL PROTECTION VULNERABILITY POVERTY INDEX Gabon's abundant endowment of natural resources, its strategic location, political stability, high urbanization, and youthful population create a broad but challenging development space for poverty reduction and shared prosperity. Immediately after independence the benefits of the oil boom propelled the country to upper-middle-income status and brought major progress in living conditions. The thriving resource sector triggered large migration flows of rural population to urban centers, resulting in the highest urbanization rate recorded in Africa. This urbanization process was characterized by increasing concentration of population and economic activities in a few cities along the coast, while the rest of the country became increasingly sparsely populated. The institutional and infrastructural foundations to ensure inclusive development and broad-based improvement of living conditions were not adequately set up. As a result, early economic and social achievements became unsustainable and have begun to fade with the decline of commodity prices and depletion of resources. Since its peak in the mid-1970s, real GDP per capita has halved. Today, persistent spatial inequalities are holding back lagging areas, unemployment is among the highest in Africa, and a large share of employment is informal and of low productivity. Poverty remains pervasive in the country. The incidence of poverty is particularly high in rural areas, but there is a disproportionate concentration of the poor in the main urban centers. Weak governance, coupled with lack of sound budgetary planning, prevent effective allocation of resources to promote social development and spatial integration. This Poverty Assessment uses the available household survey data (EGEP 2005 and 2017), the Demographic Health Surveys (DHS 2000 and 2012) and population census (RGPL 2013) to examine the nature of Gabon's poverty and looks forward asking what would be needed to sustainably reduce it. 2020-03-13T13:51:38Z 2020-03-13T13:51:38Z 2020-03 Report http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33429 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Economic & Sector Work Economic & Sector Work :: Poverty Assessment Africa Gabon
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
topic POVERTY RATE
POVERTY TRENDS
SHARED PROSPERITY
INEQUALITY
SOCIAL INCLUSION
SPATIAL ANALYSIS
LIVING STANDARDS
ASSET OWNERSHIP
SOCIAL PROTECTION
VULNERABILITY
POVERTY INDEX
spellingShingle POVERTY RATE
POVERTY TRENDS
SHARED PROSPERITY
INEQUALITY
SOCIAL INCLUSION
SPATIAL ANALYSIS
LIVING STANDARDS
ASSET OWNERSHIP
SOCIAL PROTECTION
VULNERABILITY
POVERTY INDEX
World Bank
Gabon Poverty Assessment
geographic_facet Africa
Gabon
description Gabon's abundant endowment of natural resources, its strategic location, political stability, high urbanization, and youthful population create a broad but challenging development space for poverty reduction and shared prosperity. Immediately after independence the benefits of the oil boom propelled the country to upper-middle-income status and brought major progress in living conditions. The thriving resource sector triggered large migration flows of rural population to urban centers, resulting in the highest urbanization rate recorded in Africa. This urbanization process was characterized by increasing concentration of population and economic activities in a few cities along the coast, while the rest of the country became increasingly sparsely populated. The institutional and infrastructural foundations to ensure inclusive development and broad-based improvement of living conditions were not adequately set up. As a result, early economic and social achievements became unsustainable and have begun to fade with the decline of commodity prices and depletion of resources. Since its peak in the mid-1970s, real GDP per capita has halved. Today, persistent spatial inequalities are holding back lagging areas, unemployment is among the highest in Africa, and a large share of employment is informal and of low productivity. Poverty remains pervasive in the country. The incidence of poverty is particularly high in rural areas, but there is a disproportionate concentration of the poor in the main urban centers. Weak governance, coupled with lack of sound budgetary planning, prevent effective allocation of resources to promote social development and spatial integration. This Poverty Assessment uses the available household survey data (EGEP 2005 and 2017), the Demographic Health Surveys (DHS 2000 and 2012) and population census (RGPL 2013) to examine the nature of Gabon's poverty and looks forward asking what would be needed to sustainably reduce it.
format Report
author World Bank
author_facet World Bank
author_sort World Bank
title Gabon Poverty Assessment
title_short Gabon Poverty Assessment
title_full Gabon Poverty Assessment
title_fullStr Gabon Poverty Assessment
title_full_unstemmed Gabon Poverty Assessment
title_sort gabon poverty assessment
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2020
url http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33429
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