If you want a Caribbean roadmap that’s more than slogans, look east. The Dominican Republic built a measurement system, tied it to a live social registry, and—crucially—publishes the results.
Amazingly, their report exposed that monetary poverty fell from 27.7% (2022) to 23.0% (2023), then down again to 19.0% in 2024—about 413,686 people crossing the line. That’s not vibes; that’s people moving out of poverty.
Central to the model is a national multidimensional poverty index (MPI)—the IPM-RD—so progress isn’t just about income. It tracks five dimensions with 24 indicators (think education, housing, services and health proxies), giving government a fuller picture of deprivation and who is at risk of being left behind.
That measurement plugs into a social registry that works—SIUBEN, the Registro Social Universal de Hogares. It’s not a spreadsheet; it’s a constantly updated database used by ministries to find households, target benefits and keep records current. In short, it’s the operational bridge between statistics and cash or services landing in the right kitchen this month.
And the numbers aren’t hidden.
The country runs public scoreboards—an interactive poverty portal and periodic poverty bulletins—so anyone (including journalists and donors) can check the figures, not the press release. The methodology and updates are laid out by the statistics office, making the series comparable over time.
So what actually moved? A big annual drop in 2023—poverty 27.7% → 23.0%, with extreme poverty down to 3.2%—followed by another leg down in 2024 to 19.0%. The 2024 bulletin is explicit about the scale: ~413,686 people exiting poverty.
Is that the whole story? No. Rural gaps and vulnerability still matter, and the World Bank’s 2023 assessment flags the uneven geography of progress and the need to keep strengthening systems. But the direction is hard to ignore—and the transparency lets you audit it.
Why it works, and why neighbours should copy it: measure more than money (so you see deprivations income alone misses), keep a live registry to act quickly on what the data shows, and publish, then improve with regular bulletins and an open portal.
It’s a playbook the rest of the region can borrow without reinventing the wheel.
Angle by Deandrea Hamilton. Built with ChatGPT (AI). Magnetic Media — CAPTURING LIFE.
