Income concentration remains extremely high in Latin America and the Caribbean, in contrast to the fact that in 2024, the lowest level of income poverty was recorded since the indicator's inception: 25.5% of the population, about 162 million people, according to data accessed by the Argentine news agency Noticias Argentinas. The annual study 'Social Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean 2025: How to Get Out of the Trap of High Inequality, Low Social Mobility and Weak Social Cohesion' was released this Wednesday at the regional headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago, Chile, and was presented by the agency's Executive Secretary, José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs. The official explained at a press conference that Latin America and the Caribbean must redouble its efforts to escape the trap of high inequality, low social mobility and weak social cohesion and to meet the commitments recently agreed upon at the Social Summit 2025, held in Qatar. ECLAC proposes five strategies: reduce educational inequality; create quality jobs; advance gender equality and the care society; confront discrimination and disrespect for the human rights of people with disabilities, indigenous peoples and migrants; and continue strengthening social institutional capacity and its financing. 'The global economic scenario is not the most favorable, social discontent has accumulated, frustrations in political systems and polarization, which even threatens democratic institutionalization,' pointed out the United Nations official. Lowest values The report detailed that 25.5% of the Latin American population was in a situation of income poverty in 2024, which meant a decrease of 2.2 percentage points compared to 2023 and more than 7 percentage points compared to 2020, in the midst of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It highlighted that the incidence of monetary poverty observed in 2024 in the region constituted the lowest value since there are comparable data. In turn, extreme poverty affected 9.8% of the population (62 million people) in 2024, representing 0.8 percentage points less than the previous year, but 2.1 percentage points above the rate recorded in 2014, when the lowest level of the last three decades was reached, the study pointed out. During the presentation, the Director of ECLAC's Social Development Division, Alberto Arenas, explained that the richest 10% of the region captured 34.2% of the total income in 2024, while the poorest 10% only reached 1.7%, an 'extreme' difference. The economist elaborated that this is just one of the dimensions in which inequality manifests in the region, as it is a structural and multidimensional phenomenon. He detailed that between 2021 and 2024, the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality, decreased in the region by 2.2 percentage points and reached 25.5% of the population in this territory. Gini Coefficient However, the ECLAC report emphasizes that the average Gini coefficient for Latin America and the Caribbean is the highest of all regions in the world, only lower than one subregion of Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa), and exceeds that of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) by 14 percentage points. The report explains that this annual ECLAC study presented for this edition a new methodology that included a two-dimensional index of educational inequality of opportunities for the region, which combines coverage with learning outcomes. 'Although this index decreased in almost all countries in the region, the average for Latin America more than doubled that of the OECD in 2022, which creates obstacles for intergenerational social mobility in the region,' the report noted. It also warned that the overload of unpaid work limits the participation of young women in education, the labor market, the public and political sphere, and rest time, so advancing in gender equality and the care society is another powerful strategy to overcome the trap of high inequality, low social mobility and weak social cohesion.
