Result of Service

The individual contractor should provide the required research support and deliver products according to the duties and responsibilities in a timely manner. The individual contractor should also help in finalizing all comments provided by teammates and other UN staff, and should provide all statistical-software codes and data sets related to the projects by the end of the contract in an organized manner.

Work Location

UN-House ESCWA

Expected duration

6 Months

Duties and Responsibilities

The Poverty project at UN ESCWA is mandated with monitoring the state of poverty in ESCWA member States, and assisting States with their poverty reduction strategies.

Reporting to the Poverty and Inequality Project Coordinator, under the broad supervision of the Cluster Leader, the individual contractor will work closely with the Poverty and Inequality Project team assisting in the following areas:

1- Building and organizing datasets for money metric poverty indicators for all countries worldwide using data from the World Bank, country-specific statistical offices and other public databases. Updating existing ESCWA databases for new poverty records.
2- Collect, synthesize and analyze data on poverty and inequality including trend analysis pre and post COVID-19. Contribute to the analysis of results including aggregation at regional level, and interpretation.
3- Assistance with drafting a technical report that addresses global poverty and inequality, including a literature review on existing evidence, and data and methodology description.
4- Assistance with developing the necessary statistical codes (in R or Stata, or similar programs) that are needed in the income poverty analysis, especially focusing on the variety of parametric income distribution models.
5- Assist in other related tasks as requested by the supervisor.

Qualifications/special skills

A Master’s degree in Statistics, Economics or related area is required.

All candidates must submit certification of the required educational degree. Incomplete applications will not be reviewed.
A minimum of 3 years of work experience in conducting quantitative analysis of data using statistical software, economic data analysis, presentation, drafting and visualization is required.
2 years of experience in studying poverty or inequality in the Arab world is desirable.

Languages

English and French are official working languages of the United Nations Secretariat; and Arabic is a working language of ESCWA.

For this position, knowledge of English and Arabic is required. Knowledge of French is desirable.

Note: “Fluency” equals a rating of ‘fluent’ in all four areas (speak, read, write, and understand) and “Knowledge of” equals a rating of ‘confident’ in two of the four areas.

No Fee

THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.