The pandemic has created 22 million new poor in Latin America

The pandemic has brought 22 million people below the poverty line in 2020 in the countries of the region, according to data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Thus, 209 million people are considered poor and, of this total, 78 million are destitute. Latin America has been one of the territories most affected by the health crisis and all nations have seen their indices increase.

On Wednesday, Argentina announced that the final poverty figure for last year was 42%, an increase of 6.5 percentage points from the previous year. Homelessness has climbed to 10.5%. This is one of the first official data known among the countries of the region on the impact of the coronavirus on this social indicator.

In Latin America, 209 million people are considered poor and, of this total, 78 million are destitute.

Others who have already released their official statistics were Uruguay, which, according to its statistics institute, saw an increase from 8.8% to 11.6%. This would imply nearly 100,000 people falling into poverty, making a total of 409,586 people in this situation. For Uruguay, this is the third consecutive year of increase in poverty: from 7.9% in 2017 to 8.1% in 2018, to 8.8% in 2019 and 11.6% in 2020. With this last figure, the neighboring country has its highest number since 2013, while it was 11.5%.

Paraguay, for its part, measured that due to the health crisis, 26.9% of its inhabitants are below the poverty line., up from a year earlier, that number was 23.5%. In a population of around 7 million, this 26.9% means that around 1.9 million people lived in 2020 with a per capita income below the price of the basic consumption basket, which includes food and basic services.

On your side, Ecuador saw a jump from 25% to 32.4%, affecting 5.6 million people. Meanwhile, 14.9% of Ecuadorians were in extreme poverty in December. This meant an increase of 6 percentage points between 2019 and 2020 for this indicator.

It should be noted that each country has its own methodology for measuring povertyTherefore, it is not possible to make a linear comparison between the official statistics of each case.

A few days ago, the International Monetary Fund made an estimate of the variation in poverty Peru, as part of the Article IV report that the organization typically prepares annually among partner countries. In this report, the IMF calculated that the increase in this index was from 21.7% to 27.5%.

As Mexico, not for the moment with the official figures, it would have had an increase of 49% to 56%, according to a study by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). According to these percentages measured by the University Program for Development Studies (PUED), 6.5 million people have been added to extreme poverty and 9 million to poverty.

According to a Cepal survey, all countries in the region are experiencing an increase in their poverty rate. Among the countries with the highest poverty rates after the impact of the coronavirus were Honduras (58.6% against 52.3% the previous year), Bolivia (39% against 31.1%), Colombia (38.7% against 31.7%) and El Salvador (38% against 30.4 %). Chile, for example, recorded a much smaller increase than the rest of the countries, from 10.7% to 10.9%.

In this way, beyond comparisons between countries, In proportional terms, the largest increases in poverty have been recorded by Uruguay, since its jump from 8.8% to 11.6% represents an increase in this index of 31.8%; It is followed by Ecuador (29.6% between its 2019 poverty rate and that of 2020), Peru (26.7%), Bolivia (25.4%) and Colombia (22% ).

The crisis derived from the coronavirus pandemic in Latin America this will mean a decline of 12 years in terms of poverty and 20 years in terms of extreme poverty, according to ECLAC. Looking at all countries together, extreme poverty fell from 11.3% in 2019 to 12.5% ​​last year, while poverty fell from 30.5% to 33.7%.

Among the countries with the highest poverty rates after the impact of the coronavirus were Honduras (58.6% with an increase of 52.3% the previous year), Bolivia (39% from 31.1%) , Colombia (38.7%).% of 31.7%) and El Salvador (38% against 30.4%).

The increase in poverty was linked to the loss of jobs caused by the pandemic. Unemployment reached 10.7% in 2020, an increase of 2.6 percentage points from the value recorded in 2019, with a significant departure of people from the working population and a limited possibility of teleworking, since only 21.3% of those employed in the region were able to carry out work remotely.

The countries with the highest unemployment rates recorded throughout the year were, according to the ECLAC measure, Argentina (20.9%), Colombia (21.8%), Costa Rica (20.1%) and Peru (39.5%).

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