MEASURING HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN COUNTRIES WITH INVISIBLE ECONOMIES: CHALLENGES POSED BY THE INFORMAL AND REMITTANCE SECTORS IN JAMAICA

There is increasing concern in many Caribbean countries that many of the aggregate indicators of social and human development are insufficiently accurate and realistic. Possible explanations of the problem include high levels of selective underreporting, the existence of a large remittance economy and a significant informal (including illegal) sector with inadequately and insufficiently recorded information, and real deficiencies in the quality of the societies' social institutions. This paper explores the problem by looking at one of the measures designed to identify the proportion of the population unable to obtain basic conditions of life, and without the resources to gain access to those basic conditions. To this end it examines the data generated since 1990 by the World Bank-inspired poverty assessment surveys. Special focus is on Jamaica as it is the only Caribbean country which has conducted annual Surveys of Living Conditions since 1989. In the Caribbean, data collection difficulties have meant that poverty assessments have been almost entirely based on consumption data. In the aggregate and survey data available, the apparent anomalies and apparent contradictions are troubling, and raise questions about the accuracy and validity of the consumption-based poverty assessments. It is not clear for example, why general declines in GDP per capita and real GDP growth, and fluctuating or falling national mean consumption levels should be accompanied by sharply falling levels of poverty. This paper examines some of these relationships and suggests that considerably more information and analysis of some of the consumption expenditures, and role of income and other resource transfers are needed if this measure of human development is to be more useful and realistic. Dans beaucoup de pays de la Caraïbe, on se préoccupe de plus en plus du manque de précision et de réalisme des indicateurs globaux du développement social et humain. Ce probléme s'explique probablement par le manque important de statistique, l'existence d'une économie d'envoi qui est très grande, un secteur informel de taille (y compris les activités illégales, des informations inexistantes ou peu existantes ainsi que des institutions sociales de mauvaise qualité. Le présent article étudie le problème en examinant l'une des mesures qui ont été conçues pour identifier le pourcentage de la population qui n'a pas accès aux conditions de vie de base et sans les ressources nécessaires pour obtenir les