Multidimensional Poverty in Seychelles

The typically used multidimensional poverty indicators in the literature do not appear to be relevant for middle-income countries like Seychelles and can yield unrealistic estimates of poverty. In particular, the deprivations typically considered in such measures little occurs in middle-income economies. In this paper, we propose a new approach to measuring multidimensional poverty in Seychelles based on a mix of objective and subjective information about households living conditions, and on how these households view their spending priorities. The empirical results based on our new approach show that a small but non-negligible minority of Seychellois can be considered as multidimensionally poor, mostly as not being able to satisfy their shelter and food basic needs. Finally, the Seychelles social aid programs run by the Agency for Social Protection is poorly targeted whether evaluated in terms of multidimensional poverty or in terms of one-dimensional monetary poverty.