Sociologist Dr Heather Ricketts is not convinced that the Government’s plan to eradicate absolute poverty in Jamaica by 2030 will be realised given persistent global instability, particularly political conflicts and their economic ripple effects. However, she believes the country is making great progress towards that goal.

“I think we have to look at the state of the world around us. There has been instability. We’ve seen now with the Israel-Gaza-Palestine situation — [I] hope things settle there, and the Russia-Ukraine war that that comes to an end — and so on, but there are pockets of instability. France is not a settled place; we have the Haitian crisis on our doorstep…and so if the world is in turmoil, the prices of goods and raw materials, things that we require for our manufacturing sector, etc, if those prices go up, then they will have an impact on our inflation rate here,” Dr Rickets argued in an interview with the
Jamaica Observer last Thursday, a day before the observance of International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

“You know what inflation does, that means that people don’t have or have a lower ability to afford the goods and services that they would require, so I think we have to pay attention to the international climate and context in which we operate, but I would say that we are moving in the right direction,” added Dr Ricketts who holds a PhD in development studies and is dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at The University of the West Indies, Mona campus.

In May this year the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) reported that the island significantly reduced its absolute poverty rate to a historic low of 8.2 per cent in 2023, down from 16.7 per cent in 2021. That met the national goal to reduce absolute poverty below 10 per cent by 2030. Jamaica’s food poverty rate also stands at 2.8 per cent, a small percentage away from the goal of eradicating food poverty by 2030.

However, the Government has said it aims to do more as Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness recently announced that his Administration is on a new mission to eradicate absolute poverty.

Dr Ricketts defined absolute poverty as the inability of an individual to have sufficient income and resources to meet the basic requirements for survival, such as food, shelter, health care, and water.

“If a person does not have these basic tools, then we would consider them to exist in absolute poverty,” she said.

“I should say that there is what we call indigence or food poverty, which is not having sufficient food or the food required for you to sustain yourself on a day-to-day basis…so that’s different from absolute poverty. People who are in absolute poverty can be in food poverty, so you would find persons who are below the poverty line also experiencing food poverty or indigence,” the sociologist explained.

While acknowledging that Jamaica has achieved greater levels of macroeconomic stability and has a strengthened social protection system, Dr Ricketts stressed that there is still much to do, arguing that education and training remain among the most critical tools for breaking the cycle of poverty.

“If persons don’t have adequate education to the level that would be required for them to have a decent entry into the labour market, if they lack social protection support, and also if they are unable to get a job, if they are unemployed for a long period of time, things like those would cause one to be in poverty,” she told the Sunday Observer.

She noted that while training programmes through HEART/NSTA Trust have increased, a large portion of Jamaica’s workforce remains uncertified, limiting access to better-paying employment.

“If a labour force does not have the required certification for particular jobs that are more high-end or that will be able to attract better salaries, then we will be complaining about inadequate remuneration and inadequate salaries until the cows come home, so we have to accept that we need to have a far more skilled and certified force,” Dr Ricketts said.

“Without certification these days, and without upskilling and continuous upskilling, continuous learning, we’re going to be left behind. All of us who make up this employed labour force or who make up the labour force are going to have to realise that we have to get certified. If we want to enjoy better salaries, we are going to have to be certified. A big part of eradicating absolute poverty has to do with education and training. If you’re not qualified and you’re not skilled, you’re setting yourself up for vulnerability, and you’re setting up your family for vulnerability,” she explained.

In the same breath, she called for faster implementation of unemployment insurance and expansion of programmes that support people with disabilities and other groups.

“I am wanting us to note that there is something called the working poor, so you can be working, but yet still below the poverty line. I’m not saying that employment rates or unemployment coming down is, by itself, an exceptionally good marker [for eradication of absolute poverty], but the unemployment rate coming down would be a good marker in addition to the poverty incidence falling.”

“In addition to things like more persons receiving education and training, certification in particular, and your social protection system, because once you have those supports like social housing, social pensions, plus unemployment insurance, an increased number of persons being able to contribute to your national insurance scheme, those [are] important markers for the eradication of absolute poverty,” said Dr Ricketts.