Poor governance and nearly fifteen yearsof brutal conflict have made Liberia one of the poorestcountries in the world. An important objective for thedemocratically elected government of post-conflict Liberiais to reduce poverty. As part of its long-term vision plan,the Government is preparing a second Poverty ReductionStrategy (PRS) to set out its medium-term approach topoverty reduction. The current climate of peace andsecurity, as well as continued improvements in the economy,offer the Government a unique opportunity to improve on thegains that it has made in reducing poverty under itsprevious PRS. However, as cross-country evidence has shown,growth alone is not sufficient for poverty reduction. TheGovernment must also take steps to break the cycle ofchronic poverty by ensuring that the poor are givenopportunities and support to emerge from poverty, and thatthose who have emerged from poverty do not fall back intopoverty. This poverty note is intended to assist theGovernment in formulating evidence based policies aimed atpoverty reduction. This policy note draws from richinformation provided by the 2007 and 2010 Core WelfareIndicator Questionnaires (CWIQs). It also benefits fromqualitative data from a relatively large number of focusgroups on gender and youth. In addition, the note benefitsfrom the analysis contained in the 2011 human opportunitiesreport for Liberia, which focuses in particular on access to education.
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