The 2019-2020 Household Income and Expenditure Survey will allow households to define poverty in their own terms.

It will also allow participating Fijians to talk about the acceptable standard of living.

The Fiji Bureau of Statistics says this information will assist them identify people’s actual living conditions and income patterns.

Household Survey Unit Assistant Statistician Simeli Drodroveivali says the Survey starts from today and this time it will include a multidimensional poverty schedule.

“It’s not about economists or politicians to tell everyone how they define poverty. We are going right there to the public for them to tell us how they think from their own perspective.”

He says the survey has some democratic element to the process.

“We ask them for people who are working – doing casual jobs. People are doing small businesses. Remember this is household. We are not covering the big businesses – it’s the small one like canteens, people are selling whatever grog or whatever in the household. We capture all these things.”

Chief Statistician Mitieli Cama says enumerators will visit six thousand households and is urging Fijians to show their support throughout the one year study.

In the 2013-2014 survey – incidence of poverty declined from thirty-one percent to twenty-eight percent.

Urban poverty increased by two percentage to twenty percent and rural poverty declined by six percentage to thirty-seven percent.