Household Survey Shows Widening Gap Between Rich and Poor in Mozambique

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Household Survey Shows Widening Gap Between Rich and Poor in Mozambique

12:07 CAT | 09 Jan 2016

(2016-01-06) The latest household survey, released last week by Mozambique’s National Statistics Institute (INE), shows a widening gap between the richest fifth of the population and everybody else.

The survey shows an across the board improvement in living standards since the previous survey, held in 2008-09, but the gains are much sharper for the richer strata of the population than for the poorer.

At current prices, average monthly household expenditure per capita rose from 324 meticais in 2002/3 to 721 meticais in 2008/9 to 1,408 meticais (31.3 US dollars at current exchange rates) in 2014/15.

The full report breaks this down into fifths (quintiles). The richest quintile saw its monthly per capita expenditure rise from 1,487 meticais in 2008/09 to 5,812 meticais now. This is more than the other four quintiles put together.

For the first, and poorest, quintile the rise was from 222 to 427 meticais, for the second quintile it was from 371 to 743 meticais, and for the third expenditure rose from 485 t0 1,118 meticais. For the fourth quintile, monthly per capita expenditure rose from 647 to 1,776 meticais.