Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals ...

Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals
3.1 Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger (MDG1)
Most of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa will not reach
MDG1 if they do not undertake substantial additional efforts in the coming
years. While it is true that the percentage of the population that is affected
by hunger or lives on less than 1 US$ per day is lower here than in other
regions of the world, since 1990 the relevant average regional figures have
not declined, indeed they have risen.
Income poverty
In 1990 only 2.1 % of all people in the MENA region had incomes lower
than 1 US$ per day in purchasing power parities (PPP). This percentage
was lower than in all other parts of the developing world, which led UNDP
to conclude, in its 2003 HDR, that the MENA region had already reached
Target 1 (to halve income poverty) of the MDGs (UNDP 2003a, 33).
But implementation of the MDGs also depends on trends, and the trend for
the percentage share of income poverty among the population of the Middle
East and North Africa has not declined. Instead, between 1990 and
2001 the figure even rose slightly to 2.2 %. The respective share of income-poor
people in 2001 was 3 % in Egypt, 7 % in Lebanon, 2 % in Morocco,
46 % in Mauritania, and 4 % in Jordan. There are no recent data
available for the other countries of the region (see Table A2, Annex).
Furthermore, the one-dollar indicator is appropriate only in a limited sense
for the MENA region (ESCWA 2005). First, most countries in the region
are middle-and low-income countries whose wage and price levels are so
high that people there cannot, even over the short term, live from 1 US$
per day (Martens 2005). The practice of converting sums of money into
PPPs does not do full justice to this state of affairs. Conversion is based on
a market basket reflecting the composition of a country’s gross national
product. A market basket of this kind may reflect the consumption patterns
of the average citizen, but the corresponding basket of poorer households
is made up quite differently. Poor households mainly consume staple foods
and other essential goods (Bhalla 2004; Pogge / Reddy 2003a; Pogge /
Reddy 2003b; Satterthwaite 2003; Zapado 2003). Second, several MENA
countries have oil resources and are thus able to sell gasoline, heating oil,
and other oil derivatives at low prices. These play a substantial role in calculating
PPPs; and when 1 US$ is converted into a national currency, this
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