Summary Poverty Report,TLSLS 2024
The Timor-Leste Survey of Living Standards (TLSLS) 2024 marks the first
comprehensive living standards survey conducted in the country in a decade, following the Timor-Leste Survey of Living Standards conducted in 2014. The TLSLS 2024 was conducted by the Timor-Leste National Institute of Statistics (INETL, I.P.), Ministry of Finance from April to October 2024. It surveyed 7,424 households and is representative at the national and municipal levels. It provides a more comprehensive and forward-looking assessment of living standards, reflecting both the
methodological advances and evolving consumption patterns in Timor-Leste. This report presents an overview of the 2024 poverty
rates and inequality in Timor-Leste at the national and municipal levels, comparable trends in poverty since 2014, the evolution of non-monetary dimensions of household welfare and a brief synopsis of the profiles of the poor.
TLSLS 2024 is the fourth in a series of household surveys designed to evaluate various aspects of living standards in Timor-Leste. The first TLSLS was conducted in 2001, followed by subsequent surveys conducted in 2007 and 2014. This long interval underscores
the importance of the 2024 survey in providing an updated and policy-relevant picture of household welfare. TLSLS 2024 introduces substantial methodological improvements that enhance its relevance and analytical power to inform poverty reduction policies and investments. In particular, the survey expanded its scope to align with the best international practices, incorporating a redesigned questionnaire and additional modules to capture additional information, including a broader set of consumption items. Moreover, the transition to computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) represents a major innovation in data collection. This shift improves data quality through real-time validation, reduces errors, and enables more efficient monitoring compared to the paper-based methods used in 2014. At the same time, these important methodological improvements mean that the poverty estimates from the two surveys should first be rendered methodologically comparable before making direct comparisons of poverty rates across survey rounds.
Timor-Leste’s 2024 poverty estimates show meaningful progress in reducing poverty since 2014 and highlight opportunities for further gains. The TLSLS 2024 shows that 37.0 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line. On a comparable basis, poverty has fallen significantly since 2014.
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