Public aid intended for households to counteract the economic repercussions of the pandemic, notably attenuated the effects of sanitary confinement on their standard of living, according to the High Commission for Planning (HCP).
Indeed, public aid reduced the incidence of poverty by 9 percentage points, vulnerability by 8 points and inequalities by 6 points, the HCP said in a note published on Wednesday under the title “the evolution of the standard of living of households and the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on social inequalities ”.
Thus, the absolute poverty rate fell from 11.7% before the transfer of public aid to 2.5% after the transfer to the national level, respectively from 7.1% to 1.4% in urban areas and from 19%. 8% to 4.5% in rural areas, specifies the HCP, adding that the Gini index, a synthetic measure of social inequalities, rose from 44.4% without public transfers to 38.4% after receipt of public aid .
And to note the social inequalities and monetary poverty in Morocco were apprehended from data from the national survey on sources of income carried out by the HCP, from December 1, 2019 to the end of March 2020, with a sample of 3,290 households. The results obtained are presented per household and per person.
Under the effect of the health crisis and without public aid, poverty would have been 7 times higher and vulnerability multiplied by 2, deepening inequalities, notes the HCP.
In the context of the health crisis, the incidence of poverty rose to 11.7% at the time of confinement, multiplying by 5 in rural areas to 19.8%, and 14 times in urban areas for s ‘set at 7.1%.
Likewise, the vulnerability rate has more than doubled, from 7.3% before containment to 16.7% during containment. By area of residence, these proportions are respectively 14.6% and 20.2% in urban and rural areas. Under these conditions, social inequalities deteriorated and exceeded the socially intolerable threshold (42%). The Gini index reached 44.4%, against 38.5% before the health crisis. These major repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic on the socioeconomic well-being of households are forcing Morocco to react by doubling the efforts and urgent measures to fight against the exacerbation of precariousness in order to stem the increase in poverty and social inequalities and strengthen the resilience of households vulnerable to the health crisis to reverse the trend towards a more egalitarian society, observes the HCP.
The HCP would like to recall that the 2019 national survey on sources of income was carried out with the financial contribution of the World Bank and the methodological support of the National Institute of Statistics of Italy.
