The Kenya Poverty Premium

Each line takes one need and one household example, and sets the option a low-income Kenyan typically uses beside the best option or benchmark a better-off person can reach. The premium is the difference in shillings (dollars for sending money) on that example, and in percentage points a year.

• Borrowing. The M-PESA overdraft costs its one-off access fee plus the published daily fee for the balance band. A mobile loan costs the lowest published charge among the loans we track. Both are set against the Central Bank of Kenya’s weighted average lending rate, charged as simple interest for the same days. That average is a benchmark: nobody can borrow KES 1,000 for a week at it.
• Saving. A year’s interest on the example in a bank savings account at the industry average, against the latest 364-day Treasury bill, both after 15% withholding tax. The bill needs at least KES 50,000. Money market fund yields are shown beside the line and are not part of it.
• Sending money. The World Bank’s average cost of sending USD 200 to Kenya, across the services it surveyed in each corridor, against the cheapest service in the same survey.
• Gaps. A SACCO loan rate and deposit cover for bank and SACCO savers are not in any file we hold, so those lines are published empty. They are filled only from a dated primary source.

Lines are not added together: they are different needs, in different currencies, on examples we chose. A new file is made at the start of each month from the data held that day; a month’s file is not changed afterwards except to correct an error, which is logged at /corrections. A figure is only as current as its source: the date on each line is the date of the figure, not of this file.

Information, not advice.