Poverty in Latin America reaches 32.3% of population in 2022, ECLAC study reports

Poverty in Latin America reached 32.3 percent of the population in 2022, including 12.9 percent in extreme poverty,

This is a slight drop of 0.5 percentage points in poverty and 0.2 points in extreme poverty concerning the previous year, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reported on Wednesday.

The organization released at its regional headquarters in Santiago de Chile the “Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean 2022”, which presented a statistical synthesis of the socio-demographic, economic, and environmental development of the countries of the region.

In the social area, ECLAC highlighted that the yearbook showed a slight recovery in some indicators after the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), such as the slight decrease in poverty and extreme poverty.

Likewise, the impact of the pandemic on employment remained despite the slight improvement in labor indicators since the population’s participation rate in economic activity for Latin America and the Caribbean rose to 61.4 percent compared to the minimum of 57.8 percent reached in 2020.

Meanwhile, the open unemployment rate fell from 10.5 percent in 2020 to 9.3 percent in 2021. In both cases, the improvements recorded in 2021 were not enough to reach the pre-pandemic values of the indicators above, ECLAC indicated.

For its part, the yearbook recorded that, in 2022, the region’s economies grew at an estimated rate of 3.7 percent, almost half the growth recorded in 2021 (6.7 percent).

“This reflects, on the one hand, the exhaustion of the rebound effect in the 2021 recovery and, on the other, the impact and effects of restrictive monetary policies, greater fiscal spending constraints, lower levels of consumption and investment, and the deterioration of the external context,” the study added.

The chapter dedicated to environmental statistics and indicators in the region pointed out that in 2022 alone, 74 hazardous events and disasters occurred, causing more than 7 million people to be directly affected and more than 1,000 people to die.

“The value of all damages and economic losses directly or indirectly related to disasters for the year 2022 in our region amounted to 1,789 million dollars,” the study indicated.

PANDEMIC

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted poverty in the region, with job losses and economic contractions contributing to an increase in poverty rates.

ECLAC has also noted that poverty rates vary across regions, with some countries experiencing higher poverty rates than others.

For example, in 2020, the poverty rate in Venezuela was estimated at 64.8%, while in Uruguay, it was estimated at 7.8%.

It’s worth noting that data on poverty in Latin America may be subject to change as more recent data becomes available, and it’s essential to keep in mind that poverty rates are complex and can be influenced by a variety of factors such as income inequality, access to education and healthcare, and political stability.