World Bank: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay the countries with lowest poverty rates in Latin America

[forest444]

Info News
July 15, 2015

According to the agency Argentina has 10.8% income poverty, and that puts it in third place in Latin America.

The IADB (a unit of the World Bank) noted that Argentina, Chile and Uruguay are the Latin American countries with fewer poor and destitute, according to the social metrics the IDB published on its official website. Poverty in Argentina was measured at 10.8% and extreme poverty, 4.2%.

To reach these conclusions, information generated by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (Indec) was not taken into account; but was instead computed by the World Bank, which compared the purchasing power parity (of the dollar) in each country. Thus, for Argentina IADB recorded 10.8% poverty, ranking among the three countries in the region with the lowest indicators of this type, behind Uruguay, with 7.1%, and Chile with 7.5%.

The Bank takes as its poverty threshold spending per capita of below 4 dollars a day, i.e. 120 dollars per person a month.

According to the Bank's analysis Brazil recorded 20.4% poor and 10.8% indigent; Paraguay, 20.5% and 8.1%; Peru, 20.7% and 8.8%; Ecuador, 22.9% and 8.8%; Bolivia, 26.6% and 14.8%; Venezuela, 29.4% and 13.4%; and Colombia, 30.8% and 15.3%.

Income distribution by region

The Bank also compared this data with figures for 2013, through the Gini coefficient, where 0 indicates greater equality and 1 being the highest inequality and established that Argentina, with 0.420, is the third most egalitarian country in the region behind Venezuela, with 0.398; and Uruguay, with 0.384.

In this category Chile, with 0.531, was among the three most unequal countries in the region, behind only Colombia, with 0.539; and Honduras, with 0.553. In the same indicator, Brazil has a coefficient of 0.527; Ecuador, 0.485; Paraguay, 0.478; and Peru, 0.447.

At: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.infonews.com/nota/234186/para-el-banco-mundial-argentina-esta-entre-los-paises-con-menor-pobreza&prev=search

The data: http://www.iadb.org/en/research-and-data//poverty,7526.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Income distribution actually does show where the democracies are, doesn't it?

Thank you for your emphasis on Argentina as the "third most egalitarian country in the region behind Venezuela, with 0.398; and Uruguay, with 0.384."

Not too much can be said about that which reflects well upon the right.

[forest444]

2. Especially considering where Argentina was in 2002 after 27 years of right-wing control over policy

The vulture capitalism apologists like to whine about it - but when their own botchery snowballs out of control, they immediately reach for their fiscal and monetary stimulus buttons (TARP, trillions in Fed/ECB bailouts, the stimulus, all the many QE's, etc.). All this cost 20 trillion or more in the U.S. alone - hundreds of times what FDR-style pump priming have cost in Argentina or Brazil since 2003.

The difference, of course, is that in Argentina fiscal stimulus was tailored for people rather than banks and speculators (which have benefited greatly anyway). This was done with a strong incomes policy as well through family assistance, college cost aid, small business loans, low-cost mortgages, and the resurrection of their formerly defunct Social Security and Medicare equivalents. Everyone benefits.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Meanwhile, during the spectacular wreck of Argentina's economy, under the leadership

of US-servile Presidents, U.S. citizens were kept blissfully unaware of the financial bomb which had gone off and the astonishing fall-out.

Of course, there's that element in U.S. life which would have been totally indifferent, or even rejoiced over the hardship of so many people outside the US southern border. We were all brainwashed to see them as 2nd class citizens, and they were hardly ever mentioned in our corporate media unless it was a new opportunity to refresh racist antagonism toward the masses, as in painting them all as emotional, unstable, preposterous commie tools, who deserved to be ridden hard and abused by right-wing governments.