Colombia poverty declined in 2021, but still above pre-pandemic levels
BOGOTA (Reuters) – Poverty ranges in Colombia fell final yr versus 2020, amid an financial restoration within the Andean nation, however have but to return to ranges seen earlier than the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government mentioned on Tuesday.
The share of Colombians residing in poverty fell to 39.3% in 2021, in contrast with 42.5% in 2020, the federal government’s DANE statistics company mentioned. In 2019 the determine stood at 35.7%.
“Though we have now seen important recoveries between 2020 and 2021, they haven’t been sufficient for individuals’s actual per capita earnings to be increased in actual phrases than in 2019,” DANE director Juan Daniel Oviedo mentioned in a digital press convention.
Excessive poverty in 2021 retreated to 12.2%, from 15.1% the earlier yr, the company added.
The change in poverty charges got here in tandem with financial restoration: Latin America’s fourth-largest financial system expanded by 10.6% final yr.
Some 19.6 million individuals in Colombia, out of a inhabitants of fifty million, had been in poverty on the finish of 2021, whereas 6.1 million lived in excessive poverty, DANE mentioned.
Final yr, 1.4 million individuals left poverty, whereas 1.3 million left excessive poverty, the company added.
Poverty in Colombia’s city areas, residence to the vast majority of the inhabitants, closed final yr at round 37.8%, whereas excessive poverty was 10.3%.
The DANE company defines poverty as these surviving on some $3 per day, whereas these in excessive poverty reside on $1.36 a day or much less.
(Reporting by Nelson Bocanegra; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Enhancing by Leslie Adler)
