POVERTY STATISTICS

Brazil and that ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) would act as its Secretariat. A Seminar on Poverty Statistics was organized by ECLAC from 7-9 May 1997, as a starting point of activities. At the end of the Seminar, the Expert Group met for the first time and identified a group of topics to guide the participants in their common research in the area of poverty statistics. A Second Meeting of the Expert Group (Rio Group) will be held in Rio de Janeiro from 13-15 May, 1998. The Seminar helped to confirm that "de facto " in many countries of the regions, the government (meaning the Statistical Office or other official department) is engaged in the measurement of poverty. The pressure towards reducing and targeting expenditures gives an operational character to the measurement and identification of the poor. This is, therefore, a field in which user demand is strong and will continue to be so at least in the medium term. In the measurement of poverty, a clear distinction should be established between synthetic indexes and poverty statistics. The former plays a similar role to other synthetic indexes such as the rate of growth or level of GDP, the unemployment rate, the current account deficit of th