Poverty in Latin America
Introduction
Poverty is a phenomenon that has many dimensions, so there is no single way to define it. For the purposes of its practical study, most of the time, poverty has been defined as the inability of a family to cover a basic subsistence basket with its family spending. This methodological approach classifies people as poor or not poor.
Developing
Poverty in Peru has been measured following various methods;The poverty line method or indirect method. In this method poverty would be represented by a single indicator that may be the level of income or spending. The method of unsatisfied basic needs or direct method. This method allows you to capture the availability and access to basic services that are offered outside the market.
Statistics reveal that at the end of 1990 extreme poverty represented 26.8% of the population while by 1997 it is estimated that this percentage has decreased to 14.7% and a percentage of 11% was raised as a goal for 2000. The studies of the Ministry of Labor of Peru reveal that the current problem of employment is caused by the following factors:
- The demographic explosion of the 70s and early 80s, whose effects have begun to feel because they are currently incorporated into the labor market.
- The wrong economic policies implemented in the past decades.
- The rigidity of labor legislation of the 70s and 80s that discouraged the generation of jobs.
- The imperative for companies to achieve competitiveness, have caused them to move to other areas where the cost of labor is even lower.
The multidimensional poverty index (IPM) in 2018 revealed that Peru ranks 43 between 105 developing countries evaluated and at the regional level is the sixth economy with higher multidimensional poverty, behind Nicaragua, Honduras, Bolivia, Guatemala and Haiti. It was also indicated that four million Peruvians lived until that year in multidimensional poverty, representing 12.4% of the population, according to the Institute of Economics and Business Development (IEDEP) of the Chamber of Commerce of Lima(CCL).
It should be noted that this index identifies as multidimensional poor people with non -monetary deficiencies that have, at least, one third of the 10 indicators that evaluates the IPM and that are included in the fields of health, education and life standards. These are: Nutrition, infant mortality, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing and assets.
In addition, it is observed that this index represents more than three times the extreme monetary poverty of the country, where the proportion of multidimensional poor is about 10 times higher in the rural area (32.7%) than in the urban (3.4%), being also Loreto (40%), Huancavelica (31%), Huánuco (29%) and Amazonas (28%) the regions with the highest number of multidimensional poor.
Given this panorama, IEDEP reiterated that the way to reduce poverty is to maintain high and sustained economic growth based on the two growth engines: investment and productivity improvement of economic agents. The population of Peru according to estimates and projections of the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics in June 2019, currently exceeds 33 050 325 inhabitants with an average density of 25 inhabitants per km² and its annual growth rate is 1.1%.52.6% of the Peruvian population lives on the coast, 38% in the mountains, and 9.4% in the jungle.
The economically active population is equivalent to 73.57% of the total population, that is 22 668 626 inhabitants.People over 65 represent 6.4%.Life expectancy for men is 72 years, while for women it is 77 years old.The country has a literacy index of 87.73%.
Despite its accelerated economic growth, Peru continues to register problematic socio -labor indices. The infant mortality rate is 17.96%, well above other Latin American countries. Total poverty and destitution rates (extreme poverty) are respectively 23.9% and 4.7% .12 13 Peru is a multi -ethnic, multirracial and multicultural country, the State recognizes seventy -two ethnolinguistic groups grouped into sixteen linguistic families.
With respect to the ethnic component, the majority group is mestizos with 33% of the population that are mostly descendants of Spaniards and Quechuas (within the segment there are 8% mulattos and 2% of mestizos of Asian origin);It is followed by Amerindians with 45% mainly from the Quechua ethnicity, (this group is divided by 5.5% pure and 20% merits with mixture);Then the white population with 12%, product of European immigrants.
Mainly Spanish, Italians, Portuguese, French, Germans, British, Croats, Poles, among others;The last minority group is the black population along with the Asian segment of Chinese and Japanese origin with 3% of the total, as well as a small Arab segment.
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