The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics has prepared a new report on poverty in Kenya, called the Constituency Report on Well-Being, but the report has been withheld after some members of parliament complained that their areas were not ranked as sufficiently poor. Money from the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) is allocated to the areas with the most people living in poverty, so MPs are keen to ensure that their own constituencies appear well up on the list.
According to the Daily Nation, the report shows that a number of areas previously ranked highly on the poverty tables, and therefore receiving significant CDF payments, are now ranked among the wealthy. Thousands of copies of the report have been printed, but they are being kept under lock and key whilst the politicians argue about what the statistics should say.
The report identifies a household as being below the poverty line if it is unable to afford the cost of a basic basket of goods to meet the minimum nutritional requirement of 2,250 calories of food per adult per day. The cost has been estimated as about 90c per day in rural areas and $1.60 per day in urban areas. The report shows that two million more Kenyans have fallen below the poverty line in the past ten years, although the overall percentage of Kenyans living in poverty has fallen below 50%. The sharpest falls in poverty rates have been in city areas.