■ In its an­nu­al re­port So­cial Panora­ma of Latin Amer­i­ca, ECLAC es­ti­mates that the num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing in ex­treme pover­ty rose by around 5 mil­lion be­tween 2020 and 2021. The Unit­ed Na­tions or­ga­ni­za­tion calls for mov­ing to­wards uni­ver­sal, com­pre­hen­sive, sus­tain­able and re­silient so­cial pro­tec­tion sys­tems ■

(ECLAC) — The health cri­sis is still on­go­ing, and Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean is the world’s most vul­ner­a­ble re­gion in this pan­dem­ic. Thus, as a re­sult of the pro­longed health and so­cial cri­sis stem­ming from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the ex­treme pover­ty rate in Latin Amer­i­ca is seen hav­ing risen from 13.1% of the pop­u­la­tion in 2020 to 13.8% in 2021 – rep­re­sent­ing a 27-year set­back – while the over­all pover­ty rate is es­ti­mat­ed to have fall­en slight­ly, from 33.0% to 32.1% of the pop­u­la­tion.

This means that the num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing in ex­treme pover­ty went from 81 mil­lion to 86 mil­lion, while the to­tal num­ber of peo­ple in sit­u­a­tions of pover­ty de­clined slight­ly from 204 mil­lion to 201 mil­lion, the Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in­di­cat­ed to­day.

“De­spite the eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery ex­pe­ri­enced in 2021, the es­ti­mat­ed rel­a­tive and ab­solute lev­els of pover­ty and ex­treme pover­ty have re­mained above those record­ed in 2019, which re­flects the on­go­ing so­cial cri­sis. The cri­sis has al­so ex­posed the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in which a fair share of peo­ple in the mid­dle-in­come stra­ta lives, char­ac­ter­ized by low lev­els of con­tri­bu­tions to con­trib­u­to­ry so­cial pro­tec­tion and very low cov­er­age of non-con­trib­u­to­ry so­cial pro­tec­tion," states the an­nu­al re­port So­cial Panora­ma of Latin Amer­i­ca 2021, launched at a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence by ECLAC’s Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary, Ali­cia Bárce­na.

Ac­cord­ing to this doc­u­ment, the re­gion ex­pe­ri­enced a ma­jor set­back to its fight against pover­ty in 2020 due to the pan­dem­ic. Both pover­ty and ex­treme pover­ty in­creased for a sixth con­sec­u­tive year. In 2020, ex­treme pover­ty reached the lev­els seen 27 years be­fore, while the over­all pover­ty rate was at lev­els akin to those at the end of the 2000s.

In the study, ECLAC in­di­cates that in 2020 the pro­por­tion of women who did not re­ceive any in­come of their own in­creased, and pover­ty gaps per­sist­ed in rur­al ar­eas and among in­dige­nous peo­ples and chil­dren. In ad­di­tion, an ex­am­i­na­tion of var­i­ous in­dices, in­clud­ing the Gi­ni co­ef­fi­cient, ver­i­fied an in­crease in in­equal­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions or­ga­ni­za­tion, pover­ty would have been greater in 2020 if the re­gion’s coun­tries had not im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures such as emer­gency cash trans­fers. Ex­treme pover­ty would have been around 1.8 per­cent­age points high­er, and over­all pover­ty would have been 2.9 per­cent­age points high­er on av­er­age in 7 coun­tries.

Nonethe­less, the So­cial Panora­ma 2021 notes that where­as in the last 10 months of 2020, the emer­gency trans­fers an­nounced by coun­tries to mit­i­gate the cri­sis’s ef­fects amount­ed to $89.7 bil­lion dol­lars, in the first 10 months of 2021, an­nounced spend­ing on these mea­sures was half that: $45.3 bil­lion dol­lars.

“The eco­nom­ic ‘re­cov­ery’ of 2021 has not been enough to mit­i­gate the pan­dem­ic’s deep so­cial and labour ef­fects, which are close­ly linked to in­come and gen­der in­equal­i­ty, to pover­ty, to in­for­mal­i­ty and to the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in which the pop­u­la­tion lives,” stat­ed Ali­cia Bárce­na, ECLAC’s Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary, who called for main­tain­ing emer­gency cash trans­fers in 2022 or un­til the health cri­sis is brought un­der con­trol.

The doc­u­ment sus­tains that in­equal­i­ty in­creased be­tween 2019 and 2020, break­ing with the down­ward trend seen since 2002. The Gi­ni co­ef­fi­cient – used in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to mea­sure in­come dis­tri­b­u­tion – in­creased by 0.7 per­cent­age points for the re­gion­al av­er­age be­tween 2019 and 2020. This de­te­ri­o­ra­tion is di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to the reper­cus­sions of the pan­dem­ic.

Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean is one of the world’s re­gions that has ex­pe­ri­enced the longest sus­pen­sion of in-per­son class­es – around 56 weeks of to­tal or par­tial sus­pen­sion on av­er­age – which has giv­en rise to gaps in the de­vel­op­ment of cog­ni­tive skills, the loss of learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties and the risk of high­er dropout rates. School clo­sures have al­so had an im­pact on women be­ing over­bur­dened with care tasks. That is why a safe re­turn to in-per­son class­es is ur­gent­ly need­ed in 2022, the UN re­gion­al com­mis­sion un­der­scores.

In the study, ECLAC stress­es that the eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery will not be sus­tain­able un­less the health cri­sis is brought un­der con­trol, and it warns that Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean is the re­gion of the world that is most vul­ner­a­ble to COVID-19.

This re­gion has the high­est num­ber of deaths due to COVID-19 re­port­ed world­wide (1,562,845 as of De­cem­ber 31, 2021), a fig­ure that will keep ris­ing as long as the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues. This rep­re­sents 28.8% of all the COVID-19-re­lat­ed deaths re­port­ed in the world, de­spite the fact that the re­gion’s pop­u­la­tion ac­counts for just 8.4% of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion.

As of Jan­u­ary 26, 2022, 62,3% of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean’s pop­u­la­tion (around 408 mil­lion peo­ple) had been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed; as a re­sult, ECLAC called for in­ten­si­fy­ing ef­forts so that by mid-2022 all the re­gion’s coun­tries will have ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed 70% of their pop­u­la­tion.

To achieve this goal, the Com­mis­sion in­di­cates that it is ur­gent­ly nec­es­sary to strength­en pro­grams for vac­cine pro­cure­ment and mech­a­nisms for re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion and co­or­di­na­tion, in line with the Plan for Self-Suf­fi­cien­cy in Health Mat­ters in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, ap­proved by the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC) and pre­pared by ECLAC.

“The pan­dem­ic is a his­toric op­por­tu­ni­ty to forge a new so­cial com­pact that would pro­vide pro­tec­tion, cer­tain­ty and trust. A new so­cial con­tract must fur­ther and strength­en the in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work of so­cial pro­tec­tion sys­tems, en­cour­ag­ing them to be uni­ver­sal, com­pre­hen­sive, sus­tain­able and re­silient. Low­er eco­nom­ic growth will mark the com­ing years, and if ef­forts to pro­tect the pop­u­la­tion’s well-be­ing are not main­tained, there will be greater in­creas­es in pover­ty and in­equal­i­ty in the re­gion,” Ali­cia Bárce­na de­clared.

Such a so­cial com­pact re­quires a new fis­cal con­tract with pro­gres­siv­i­ty, cou­pled with very con­crete goals, such as giv­ing fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty to a so­cial pro­tec­tion regime that is uni­ver­sal and suf­fi­cient enough to be able to in­clude the en­tire pop­u­la­tion, she added.

She al­so urged for re­struc­tur­ing health sys­tems, mov­ing to­wards uni­ver­sal cov­er­age, with time­ly and qual­i­ty care for the whole pop­u­la­tion, and for the State to act as a guar­an­tor of the right to health.

Fi­nal­ly, the re­port ad­dress­es ECLAC’s pro­pos­al to move to­wards a care so­ci­ety, which in­volves rec­og­niz­ing that care is a uni­ver­sal need that nonethe­less ex­press­es struc­tur­al di­ver­si­ties such as the life cy­cle, phys­i­cal con­di­tions, so­cioe­co­nom­ic and in­come-re­lat­ed con­di­tions as well as ter­ri­to­r­i­al dif­fer­ences. “Uni­ver­sal­i­ty, in­ter­a­gency and in­ter­sec­toral co­or­di­na­tion, co-re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­sti­tute the fun­da­men­tal pil­lars of the com­pre­hen­sive care poli­cies that the re­gion needs,” the doc­u­ment con­cludes.