A recent Perception On Well-Being survey carried out by Statistics Botswana has shown that most Batswana are of the view that they are not poor.
The results of the Subjective Welfare module survey, which was collected in the third quarter of 2019/20, reveal that 74.5 percent of households in Botswana believed that Botswana is not a poor country.
Only 21.9 percent stated that the country was poor, with 3.5 percent not knowing whether the country was poor or rich. The remaining 0.2 percent did not state their opinion on whether the country was poor or rich.
However, when comparing their overall well-being with other households in their community, 53.1 percent of the households indicated that they were not living well. In ranking themselves on whether they were rich or poor, 33.9 percent of the households stated that they were poor, 13.4 percent said that they were very poor, 51.2 percent rated themselves as middle class while 9 percent of the households rated themselves as rich.
The results further showed that on average, households indicated that they required P6 027 to have a decent living standard for an average household of four members.
Lack of employment was stated as the main cause of poverty by 59.2 percent. About 9.1 percent thought that poverty was caused by other reasons, whilst 8.2 percent and 7.2 percent blame poverty on laziness and corruption respectively. An analysis of households who considered themselves to be poor and very poor shows that 49.7 percent were female headed compared to 45.3 percent who were male headed. This can be interpreted to mean that poverty was more prevalent among female headed households.
The results also indicated that marital status of household head may impact on the welfare of the households and how the households rate themselves in terms of well-being as they compare themselves with other households in their community. Of the households which considered themselves to be rich, the highest percentage (40.3 percent) were headed by married household heads. Among the middle class, 32.8 percent of the households were married, whilst among the poor 19.1 percent were married.
It must however be appreciated that subjective measure surveys generally differ from objective measure surveys due to a number of reasons. Subjective welfare should therefore be applied with caution to complement objective measures of well-being instead of being stand alone conclusions.
This article was prepared by Data Collection & Analysis (DCA), a business research firm. Feedback or inquiries can be relayed to 76 740 658.
