FAO: The covid will impact on nutrition and malnutrition 5:01
(CNN Spanish) -
"This is similar to being dead, you don't exist, you see?"
This was recognized by Francisco, a resident of Buenos Aires, who believes that before the pandemic "at least it was poor middle class ... now, directly poor."
There are 22 million
new poor in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
Poverty went from 30.5% to 33.7%, as the Director of Social Development of ECLAC, Alberto Arenas, explained to CNN.
8 million
people are newly homeless
A woman in a street situation sleeps near the Argentine Congress in Buenos Aires, on March 31, 2021, amid the covid-19 pandemic.
(JUAN MABROMATA / AFP via Getty Images)
In this sense, Arenas indicated that extreme poverty or extreme poverty went from 11.3% to 12.5%.
The social impact of the pandemic could have been worse, Arenas explained.
"If the cash transfers had not been delivered, poverty would have reached 37.2% and extreme poverty 15.8%."
According to ECLAC projects, 1.5 points of the region's GDP was allocated to social assistance to contain the impact of the pandemic.
«I lost everything, my job, I couldn't keep paying the rent.
Everything is getting worse ”, says Francisco.
Argentina
is the country in the region in which poverty increased the most, according to ECLAC.
Arenas attributes this to the strong economic decline that the country suffered, estimated at 9.9% according to official figures.
Confinement has been a great conditioning factor.
For 232 days, the country was under social, preventive and compulsory isolation.
"This quarantine in Argentina is classified as one of the longest in the world," said ECLAC's director of Social Development.
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Hunger is horrible.
I cannot describe to you how ugly it is to be hungry and to be on the street, ”says Francisco.
Some 11 million poor people turned to soup kitchens during the pandemic.
Three million of them had never been to one.
"Luckily these places exist ... if not, what would we live on?" Said Francisco.
Homeless people receive lunch in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, on March 23, 2021. (MIGUEL SCHINCARIOL / AFP via Getty Images)
According to ECLAC, Mexico is the second country in which poverty grew the most during 2020. Despite the strong increases in the number of poor, neither Mexico nor Argentina have the worst records.
Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua have the highest poverty rates.
“It is very difficult to get a job.
I have my resume here, I signed up for 10 jobs and no one calls me ”, says Francisco about his efforts to earn income again.
The GDP of Latin America fell
7.7 points
"It is the worst data in the region in the last 120 years," said Arenas.
In addition, the representative of ECLAC remarked that unemployment reached 10.6%.
"Labor participation has decreased, especially of women," he explained.
According to ECLAC's Social Panorama of Latin America report, Costa Rica and Chile are the two countries in which the most women lost their jobs.
In addition, young people and informal wage earners are the other two groups that, as described by Arenas, suffered the most from the fall in employment.
Recovery of
3.7
points of GDP by 2021
These are the estimates made by ECLAC.
However, the official warned that this can suffer fluctuations.
"Without control of the health crisis it is absolutely difficult, almost impossible, to have sustainability in the recovery," he points out.
In this sense, the second wave of covid-19 threatens to prevent a rebound in the economy and social indicators.
For this reason, the official highlights the importance of advancing with vaccination, but there the estimates are not optimistic.
He warned about access to vaccines that "is not being equitable" in the region, which would result in a delay in the scope of herd immunity expected, in some countries, by 2023.
Poverty