News

March 18, 2010 –The Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation (MOPIC) and the Department of Statistics (DOS) in Cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA) held an expert group meeting on 17-18 March. A 3-day workshop entitled “Jordan Living Standard Index - 3rd Capacity Building Workshop” has been scheduled to follow the event starting 21 till 23 March 2010 within the framework of the UNDP project “Support to Poverty Analysis and Monitoring at the Department of Statistics and the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation”.The expert group held discussions on the “Living Standards Index” developed by the national team in the preceding 4 months to get their feedback in terms of its indicators prior to finalizing it and acquainting the participants with the Living Standard Index methodology, as well as discussing how the 2010 Household Expenditure and Income Survey can best serve measuring living standards in Jordan. The Third capacity building workshop following the expert group meeting is the last in a series of 3 capacity building workshops organized from December 2009 until March 2010 for measuring living standards in Jordan. The main objective of the workshops is to build the capacity of a national team – representing the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, the Department of Statistics, the Ministry of Social Development, the Social Solidarity Coordination Commission and the National Aid Fund – in using household data to construct a multidimensional measure of poverty and living standards in general. The workshops are also expected to enhance the skills and experience of the national team with respect to understanding and processing raw data, presenting and discussing of findings, using relevant software, and acquiring teamwork skills. This workshop is planned to discuss the Living standard index for the year 2002, and comparative index for the years 2006/2008, as well as proposing new indicators to be included in the 2010 Household Expenditure and Income Survey to serve as an updated accurate Living standard Index for Jordan in the year 2010 taking all spectrum of society into account, particularly the poor. The outcome of the Jordan Living Standard Index-Expert Group Meeting and the 3rd Capacity Building workshop will thus finalize the Index. All participants in the workshop were presented with Certificates of Appreciation in recognition of their efforts into making this event a success.