The article provides a brief survey of poverty and inequality indicators and proceeds to provide their
analytical application for countries in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). Poverty measures
surveyed, included money-metric measures such as the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) indicators, while
the non-money metric measures included body mass index and human development index (HDI),
among others. The inequality measures included, inter alia the entropy measures and the Gini index.
The results reveal that SACU still has to go a long way in improving poverty and inequality levels as
well as the general well-being of its member economies. Some positive observations emerge on the
improvement of gender participation in economic and political activities in the union. Botswana
performed better than the rest of the countries as far as the fight against poverty is concerned.
However, all the countries need to continue to implement policies that not only reduce poverty but also
narrow the pervasive inequality in the region.