Poverty Incidence in Sri Lanka: Overview, Trends, Challenges and Opportunitie

Abstract

Poverty is one of the major socioeconomic issues that Sri Lanka has been attempting to tackle in the past six decades. Successive governments of the country have given highest priority to alleviate poverty and to sustain socioeconomic advancement of the country. The aim of this paper is to examine the trends of poverty incidence of the country and to identify the future challenges and opportunities that have opened up for poverty alleviation. The assessment was focused mainly on the income dimension of poverty. Secondary data published by the Department of Census and Statistics based on its Households Income and Expenditure Surveys and the data published by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka were used in the analysis. The data reveals that poverty incidence has shown a gradual declining trend during the past ten-fifteen years. Several factors including economic growth, workers' remittance, targeted poverty alleviation programs, increasing employment opportunities, improvement of socioeconomic infrastructure can be identified as the causal factors of this progress. Sustaining the declining trend and overcoming the disparity of poverty incidence among geographical locations are key challenges that should be addressed, appropriately. The end of the war the country presents several opportunities to free the country of income poverty.