La pauvreté en Mauritanie : une approche multidimensionnelle

Based on an analysis of microeconomic - household surveys of 1990 and 1995_96 - and macroeconomic data inherent in Mauritania, the present study highlights the multiple-indicator approach appropriateness of poverty. Indeed, the profiles of poverty in monetary terms remain essential to apprehend, on the one hand, to a given moment, the configuration of social states according to the various socio_economic groups, their localization in space and the relationship with the gender and, on the other hand, the dynamics of poverty in the process of development. Nevertheless, conceptually, the determination of monetary poverty is a complex process implying of the specific methodological choices. In particular, measures of the monetary poverty underlie a too narrow design of the well_being. For this reason, the credibility of an analysis of the social states requires a multiple-indicator approach. Accordingly, one shows the appropriateness and the complementarity an analysis of human poverty underlining the serious shortages in terms of capacity of choice - compared to longevity, illiteracy and the living conditions. Furthermore, although there is a strong proximity of the monetary rate of poverty and the general degree of human poverty, the weak access to basic needs calls a specific analysis of the principal sectors of the basic needs. This effort of apprehension of poverty - in Mauritania and in other developing countries - remain essential in order to elaborate social and economical policies susceptible likely to accelerate the social progress, whose stagnation reduces considerably capacities of choice of the current and future generations. (Full text in French)