De­spite the slight de­cline record­ed in 2021, pro­jec­tions in­di­cate that pover­ty and ex­treme pover­ty rates re­main above pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els in 2022 in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, the Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) warned in its So­cial Panora­ma of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean 2022 Re­port, which was pre­sent­ed to­day in San­ti­a­go, Chile, and which ad­dress­es ed­u­ca­tion as a cen­tral is­sue along with its role in the de­bate on poli­cies for the re­gion’s re­cov­ery.

“Af­ter a sharp in­crease in pover­ty and a slight in­crease in in­come in­equal­i­ty in 2020 as a re­sult of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the ex­treme pover­ty and pover­ty rates de­clined in 2021 and the mid­dle-in­come stra­ta grew, but not by enough to ful­ly re­verse the neg­a­tive ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic,” the pub­li­ca­tion ex­plains.

Thus, in 2021, Latin Amer­i­ca’s pover­ty rate reached 32.3% of the re­gion’s to­tal pop­u­la­tion (mark­ing a 0.5 per­cent­age point de­cline from 2020), while the ex­treme pover­ty rate was 12.9% (0.2 per­cent­age points less than in 2020).

ECLAC projects that by the end of 2022, pover­ty will stand at 32.1% of the pop­u­la­tion (a per­cent­age equiv­a­lent to 201 mil­lion peo­ple) and ex­treme pover­ty at 13.1% (82 mil­lion), which points to a slight de­cline in over­all pover­ty and a slight in­crease in ex­treme pover­ty ver­sus 2021, due to the com­bined ef­fects of eco­nom­ic growth, labour mar­ket dy­nam­ics and in­fla­tion. These fig­ures mean that an ad­di­tion­al 15 mil­lion peo­ple will be liv­ing in pover­ty in com­par­i­son with the sit­u­a­tion be­fore the pan­dem­ic and that there will be 12 mil­lion more peo­ple in ex­treme pover­ty than there were in 2019.

The ex­treme pover­ty lev­els pro­ject­ed for 2022 rep­re­sent a 25-year set­back for the re­gion, the re­gion­al or­ga­ni­za­tion un­der­scores.

As in past years, ECLAC in­di­cates that the in­ci­dence of pover­ty is greater in some pop­u­la­tion groups in the re­gion: more than 45% of the child and ado­les­cent pop­u­la­tion lives in pover­ty; and the pover­ty rate of women from 20 to 59 years of age is high­er than that of men in all of the re­gion’s coun­tries. Sim­i­lar­ly, pover­ty is con­sid­er­ably high­er in the in­dige­nous and Afro-de­scen­dent pop­u­la­tions.

In 2021, in­come in­equal­i­ty (as mea­sured by the Gi­ni in­dex) de­clined slight­ly ver­sus 2020 in Latin Amer­i­ca, reach­ing 0.458, which was sim­i­lar to 2019 lev­els.

Mean­while, the un­em­ploy­ment pro­ject­ed for 2022 rep­re­sents a set­back of 22 years, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­fect­ing women, whose un­em­ploy­ment is seen ris­ing from 9.5% in 2019 to 11.6% in 2022.

“The cas­cade of ex­ter­nal shocks, the de­cel­er­a­tion of eco­nom­ic growth, the weak re­cov­ery in em­ploy­ment and ris­ing in­fla­tion are deep­en­ing and pro­long­ing the so­cial cri­sis in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean,” José Manuel Salazar-Xiri­nachs, ECLAC’s Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary, stressed dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of the doc­u­ment.

“We have not been able to re­verse the pan­dem­ic’s ef­fects on pover­ty and ex­treme pover­ty, and coun­tries face a silent cri­sis in ed­u­ca­tion that is af­fect­ing the new gen­er­a­tions’ fu­ture,” the se­nior of­fi­cial warned.  He called on coun­tries to in­vest de­cid­ed­ly in ed­u­ca­tion and to turn this cri­sis in­to an op­por­tu­ni­ty for trans­form­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tems.

Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean ex­pe­ri­enced the longest ed­u­ca­tion­al black­out world­wide—with an av­er­age shut­down of ed­u­ca­tion­al es­tab­lish­ments of 70 weeks, ver­sus 41 weeks in the rest of the world—which ex­ac­er­bat­ed pre-ex­ist­ing in­equal­i­ties re­lat­ed to ac­cess, in­clu­sion and ed­u­ca­tion­al qual­i­ty. In this pe­ri­od, one of the main lim­i­ta­tions on ed­u­ca­tion­al con­ti­nu­ity was un­equal ac­cess to con­nec­tiv­i­ty, equip­ment and dig­i­tal skills. In 2021, in 8 out of 12 of the re­gion’s coun­tries, more than 60% of the poor pop­u­la­tion un­der 18 years of age had no con­nec­tiv­i­ty in their house­hold.

If ac­tion is not tak­en now, ECLAC points to the risk of per­ma­nent scar­ring in the ed­u­ca­tion­al and labour tra­jec­to­ries of the youngest gen­er­a­tions in the re­gion. Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions re­gion­al or­ga­ni­za­tion, learn­ing loss­es in the Caribbean have al­ready been mea­sured, and, in Latin Amer­i­ca, the per­cent­age of young peo­ple from 18 to 24 years of age that nei­ther stud­ies nor does paid work in­creased from 22.3% in 2019 to 28.7% in 2020, es­pe­cial­ly af­fect­ing young women (36% of them were in this sit­u­a­tion, com­pared with 22% of men).

In ad­di­tion, sig­nif­i­cant gen­der gaps per­sist in terms of per­for­mance and ar­eas of ed­u­ca­tion. Fe­male stu­dents have poor­er per­for­mances on av­er­age in math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence dur­ing ba­sic ed­u­ca­tion, with deep­er dis­par­i­ties in the low­est in­come quar­tiles. Fur­ther­more, in the ma­jor­i­ty of the re­gion’s coun­tries, the pro­por­tion of fe­male grad­u­ates in STEM (sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics) fields does not ex­ceed 40%.

De­spite the progress made in re­cent decades on ac­cess and ed­u­ca­tion­al in­clu­sion at all lev­els, from ear­ly child­hood to high­er ed­u­ca­tion, the re­gion’s coun­tries still had se­ri­ous pend­ing is­sues in terms of ed­u­ca­tion­al equal­i­ty and qual­i­ty—pri­or to the cri­sis prompt­ed by the pan­dem­ic—which were al­ready ham­per­ing ef­forts to achieve the tar­gets of Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal (SDG) 4 by the year 2030. In line with the Unit­ed Na­tions’ Trans­form­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Sum­mit held this year, the doc­u­ment pro­vides nu­mer­ous pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions to turn this cri­sis in­to an op­por­tu­ni­ty for trans­for­ma­tion.

The so­cial in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work is a crit­i­cal fac­tor for the ef­fec­tive­ness of so­cial poli­cies and is a cross-cut­ting el­e­ment for achiev­ing in­clu­sive so­cial de­vel­op­ment, ECLAC sus­tains in the So­cial Panora­ma 2022.

So­cial spend­ing by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment reached 13% of GDP in 2021 in Latin Amer­i­ca, be­low the lev­el seen in 2020 but far above what had been record­ed in the last two decades. In the Caribbean, so­cial spend­ing reached 14.1% of GDP in 2021, mark­ing a his­toric high.

In 2021, ed­u­ca­tion spend­ing amount­ed to 4.1% of GDP (30.5% of to­tal so­cial spend­ing) in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

“While pub­lic spend­ing on ed­u­ca­tion in the coun­tries of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (OECD) in 2019 av­er­aged 4.9% of GDP, a fig­ure sim­i­lar to that of the re­gion (4% of GDP in 2019), spend­ing per stu­dent in OECD is six times the equiv­a­lent in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean in pre-pri­ma­ry, 5.7 times in pri­ma­ry, 5.3 times in sec­ondary and 6.1 times in ter­tiary,” the pub­li­ca­tion spec­i­fies.

“We are fac­ing a cas­cade of crises that has ex­ac­er­bat­ed the re­gion’s in­equal­i­ties and short­falls. This is not a time for grad­ual changes, but in­stead for trans­for­ma­tive and am­bi­tious poli­cies,” José Manuel Salazar-Xiri­nachs, ECLAC’s Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary, re­it­er­at­ed.

“In­ter­sec­toral pub­lic pol­i­cy ef­forts are need­ed that would link ed­u­ca­tion­al of­fer­ings to health, work and so­cial pro­tec­tion, and that would al­low for es­tab­lish­ing mech­a­nisms to guar­an­tee a cer­tain lev­el of well-be­ing and in­come in an era of volatil­i­ty and un­cer­tain­ty,” the se­nior of­fi­cial ar­gued.

He urged coun­tries to build “new so­cial com­pacts ac­com­pa­nied by fis­cal con­tracts to make progress on strength­en­ing democ­ra­cy and so­cial co­he­sion and to en­sure the fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty of so­cial pro­tec­tion sys­tems in the re­gion.” —(ECLAC)

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To ac­cess the So­cial Panora­ma of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean 2022 Re­port, vis­it this ECLAC web­site…

https://www.cepal.org/en/pub­li­ca­tions/48519-so­cial-panora­ma-latin-amer­i­ca-and-caribbean-2022-trans­form­ing-ed­u­ca­tion-ba­sis