Senator Amara Konneh Is Mostly Correct About Liberia’s Multidimensional Poverty Rate

In Summary:

• Senator Amara Konneh has claimed that 52.9% of Liberians are multidimensionally poor, citing the 2024 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which measures deprivations in health, education, and living standards.
  
• We have verified this claim by reviewing Liberia’s 2024 MPI report, which was produced by the United Nations Development Programme and the University of Oxford, and found that 52.3% of Liberia’s population is multidimensionally poor based on survey data collected between 2019 and 2020.
  
• Based on this fact, we rate the claim mostly correct, though the accurate figure is 52.3%, not 52.9%.

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Gbarpolu County Senator Amara Konneh claimed in a Facebook post on May 1 that 52.9% of Liberians are multidimensionally poor, facing deprivations in health, education, and living standards.

Senator Konneh cited the 2024 Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) as the source of his claim while highlighting what he described as the hardships many Liberians face in feeding their families, educating their children, and accessing quality healthcare services amid challenges within the country’s health sector.

Developed by the United Nations Development Programme and the University of Oxford, the MPI measures overlapping deprivations across three dimensions — health, education, and living standards — to provide a broader assessment of poverty beyond income alone.

The Claim

An excerpt of Senator Konneh’s claim reads: “Let’s be honest: 52.9% of Liberians are multidimensionally poor, facing deprivations in health, education, and living standards, according to the 2024 Multidimensional Poverty Index.”

Rating Justification

To verify the claim, we reviewed Liberia’s 2024 Multidimensional Poverty Index report.

According to the 2024 MPI report, 52.3% of Liberia’s population is multidimensionally poor. According to the report, the estimates are based on Liberia’s most recent publicly available survey data for MPI calculations, which were collected between 2019 and 2020 during the previous administration.

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Conclusion

Based on the findings, we conclude that Senator Konneh’s claim is mostly correct.

While the 2024 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index confirms that more than half of Liberia’s population is multidimensionally poor, the reported figure is 52.3%, not 52.9%.

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