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Thursday, July 24, 2025

UN: Latin American poverty rate ebbs to lowest in three decades

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20121127

SAN­TI­A­GO-Grow­ing job in­come helped lift one mil­lion peo­ple out of pover­ty this year in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, help­ing re­duce the re­gion's pover­ty rate to the low­est in three decades, the UN's eco­nom­ic body for the re­gion said in re­port yes­ter­day.

Around 167 mil­lion peo­ple in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, or rough­ly 28.8 per­cent of the to­tal pop­u­la­tion, lived in pover­ty this year, a sharp drop from a decade ago, ac­cord­ing to San­ti­a­go-based Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

"Pover­ty re­duc­tion was most re­lat­ed to in­creas­es in job-re­lat­ed in­come for poor house­holds," ECLAC said in its re­port. "Pub­lic and pri­vate trans­fers and oth­er in­come helped, but less sig­nif­i­cant­ly, in re­duc­ing pover­ty." The ex­port-de­pen­dent re­gion's boom­ing eco­nom­ic growth has helped cut pover­ty rates over the past decade.

But the UN body re­cent­ly es­ti­mat­ed the re­gion's eco­nom­ic growth would mod­er­ate to 3.2 per cent this year from 4.3 per cent in 2011 and about six per cent in 2010.

The UN body yes­ter­day warned that the pace of pover­ty's fall was eas­ing in the re­gion, chiefly due to low-qual­i­ty em­ploy­ment and a re­duced fo­cus on so­cial spend­ing. The rate dropped 0.6 per­cent­age points in 2012 from 2011, slow­ing its pace from a 1.6 per­cent­age point fall in 2011 from 2010.

A decade ago, around 225 mil­lion peo­ple were con­sid­ered poor, or 43.9 per cent of the to­tal pop­u­la­tion at the time, ac­cord­ing to the re­port. The re­port pro­vid­ed no spe­cif­ic thresh­olds for pover­ty and ex­treme pover­ty in Latin Amer­i­ca. But it added that in dif­fer­ent Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, peo­ple liv­ing in pover­ty re­ceived sub­stan­tial­ly less than the me­di­an in­come.

Paraguay, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Colom­bia have some of the high­est pover­ty rates in the re­gion, while Ar­genti­na, Uruguay and Chile have the low­est, the re­port added. (Reuters)


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