25.5% of the Latin American population (about 162 million people) was in a situation of monetary poverty in 2024, which represents a decrease of 2.2% compared to the previous year and is the lowest level since comparable data has been available, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reported this Wednesday.
“The reduction in the number of population in poverty at the regional level in 2024 is mainly explained by the results of Mexico and, to a lesser extent, Brazil,” indicated the United Nations agency in its report “Social Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean 2025.”
Extreme poverty, for its part, affected 9.8% of the population (62 million people) in 2024, which represents 0.8 percentage points less than the previous year, but was 2.1 percentage points above the rate recorded in 2014, when the lowest level in the last three decades was reached, according to the document.
By 2025, the organization – based in Santiago, Chile – “projects a slight reduction in poverty, due to the limited prospects for regional growth.”
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Inequality remains extreme in the region, says ECLAC
In the same study, the international organization highlighted that multidimensional poverty went from 34.4% of the region’s population in 2014 to 20.9% in 2024, “mainly thanks to advances in housing and services,” it explained.
In October, ECLAC improved its regional growth forecast for this year by two tenths to 2.4%, while for 2026 it maintained the estimate at 2.3%.
Latin America, considered the most unequal region in the world, closed both 2023 and 2024 with growth of 2.3%.
Regarding inequality, the organization warned that “the concentration of income continues to be extreme in Latin America, since the richest 10% captures 34.2% of total income, while the poorest 10% only reaches 1.7%.”
“Although it shows a slow downward trend, the average Gini coefficient of Latin America and the Caribbean is the highest of all regions in the world – only lower than a subregion of Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa) – and exceeds that of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) by 14 percentage points,” says ECLAC.
To overcome the disparity in question, ECLAC recommended different strategies such as reducing educational inequality, creating quality jobs, advancing gender equality and the caring society, and continuing to strengthen social institutions and their financing.
With information from EFE
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