PRAIA, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- Cape Verde's absolute poverty rate has decreased over the past eight years, falling from 35.5 percent in 2015 to 24.75 percent in 2023, the country's National Institute of Statistics (INE) said Thursday.

Absolute poverty is measured by assessing whether a household's income falls below a defined threshold, preventing its members from meeting basic needs such as clean drinking water, food, housing, healthcare and education.

Extreme poverty, defined by the international threshold of 2.15 U.S. dollars per person per day, has been halved, the report said. In 2015, 4.56 percent of the population was classified as living in extreme poverty, a figure that dropped to 2.28 percent in 2023.

While the overall decline in poverty is encouraging, INE said that disparities persist between rural and urban areas. In urban regions, poverty decreased from 28.08 percent in 2015 to 21.31 percent in 2023. However, rural areas saw a sharper decline, with poverty dropping from 48.87 percent in 2015 to 35.23 percent in 2023.

Despite these improvements, the figures for extreme poverty reveal a more pronounced gap. In urban areas, extreme poverty stood at 1.4 percent in 2023, compared to 4.97 percent in rural regions.

The Cape Verdean government has set an ambitious target to eradicate extreme poverty by 2026. Enditem

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