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People living in poverty in Colombia increased by 661,890 last year, while those who are below the extreme poverty line added another 728,955, according to what Juan Daniel Oviedo, director of the National Administrative Department of Statistics, announced on Tuesday. (Dane).
This means that poverty in the country increased one percentage point in the last year, from 34.7 percent in 2018 to 35.7 percent in 2019, which indicates that about 17.5 million people in the country were in that condition last year.
(In context: In 2019, poverty in Colombia was 35.7%)
For its part, individuals living in extreme poverty in the country increased last year by about 729,000, which caused some 4.7 million people to find themselves in that situation, raising the indicator to 9.6 percent , from 8.2 percent in 2018, the Dane said.
The increase in unemployment in the country last year is among the main reasons why more people are below the poverty and extreme poverty lines, especially in rural areas, said Oviedo, adding that the effects of the pandemic on the country’s labor market undoubtedly constitute a fundamental input to know how it will affect the indicators of monetary poverty this year.
He also said that last year’s increases are in line with what was observed on these same fronts in Latin America, where both monetary poverty and extreme poverty grew 0.8 percent in 2019, after the methodological update of the measurements made in the countries in the region.
In Latin America, according to data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), monetary poverty increased from 30 percent of the population in 2018 to 30.8 percent in 2019.
Since 2014 there has been a deterioration in the situation of monetary poverty of the population in the region, said the official, based on the information provided by ECLAC. Between 2015 and 2016 there was an increase of one percentage point in the deterioration of the economic situation of the population, he added. The following year it remained almost stable.
The methodological update was a logical step after the household budget survey was carried out in 2017, which identified the changes in the ways of consuming in the country.
The report presented on Tuesday used a methodological update of the measurement, with recommendations from an independent academic commission, he explained.
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Poverty line
The Dane also revealed that a person who is above the extreme monetary poverty line is one whose income amounts to 137,350 pesos per month and that in the case of a household, made up of four individuals, those resources are 549,400 pesos per month.
Similarly, it is considered that those people whose income reaches 327,674 pesos each month are not poor, while for a household of four people, 1,310,696 pesos are enough to consider that they do not classify as poor in Colombia.
Referring to the Gini coefficient, which measures the level of income inequality of the population, the official said that this was 0.526 last year and its variation was not statistically significant compared to the 2018 data of 0.517.
Although Cúcuta (42,076 people), Santa Marta (20,583) and Sincelejo (17,825) are cities where more people fell below the poverty line last year, municipal capitals and rural areas were the ones that contributed the most to this phenomenon in the country, which is closely related to the employment situation, since it is where more jobs were lost in that period, explained Oviedo.
Dane statistics show that they contributed 29 percent of those 661,899 people who were left in poverty in 2019.
The rest of urban areas contributed 23.8 percent, while Bogotá did so in 13.4 percent.
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Impact on type of household
The characteristics of each household in the country mean that they have a greater or lesser propensity to fall below the poverty line.
For example, last year, this condition affected 43 percent of households whose head of household was headed by a young person (up to 25 years old) and 38.2 percent if they were women.
The level of education was also fundamental, since the increase in those with secondary education increased 1.7 percentage points, to 36.3 percent.
Regarding their employment situation, it is clear that in those households with inactive people, the increase in poverty went from 34.1 to 35.2 percent between 2018 and 2019, while it had a stronger negative impact on people who they are self-employed, as it caused poverty in these households to grow 1.4 percentage points in the last year to reach 44.7 percent.
The Dane specified that in the populated and dispersed rural centers, the greatest increase in the incidence of monetary poverty occurs when the head of the household is unemployed, a circumstance that registered an increase of 6.5 percentage points.
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