The Jardim Gramacho community, where the largest landfill in Latin America was located until five years ago, is a focus of extreme poverty, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Ariel Subirá
Those under 18 years of age are the group most exposed to misery in Latin America.
Almost 45% of children and adolescents live in poverty, 13 points more than the average for the region's population, according to the
Social Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean 2022
report published this Thursday by the Economic Commission for Latin America .
and the Caribbean (CEPAL) in Santiago de Chile.
Of the 81 million minors who thrive in this precarious context, 35 million live in extreme poverty.
In all the countries of the region, the poverty rates in this group exceed -and in some cases double-.
the national average.
The most affected are the children of Colombia, Honduras and Mexico, where more than half live in poverty.
In Argentina, Bolivia and El Salvador the percentage reaches or exceeds 40%.
Since 2015, the region has seen a slight rise in poverty, a deterioration in well-being levels, and a stagnation in progress in educational achievement, the report says, but the pandemic has generated a social crisis that is now in its third year it threatens to cause a “scar effect” that diminishes the opportunities of that generation.
"This is not the time for gradual changes, but rather for transformative and ambitious policies," said José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, Executive Secretary of ECLAC, on Thursday.
"Intersectoral public policy efforts are required to link the educational offer with health, work and social protection, and to establish mechanisms to guarantee a level of well-being and income in an era of volatility and uncertainty," he added.
The prolonged closure of schools in Latin America (70 weeks average closure compared to 41 weeks in the rest of the world), exacerbated pre-existing inequalities in terms of access, inclusion and quality.
If health policies are not articulated with education policies in the short term, ECLAC warns, it can have serious consequences for the educational and employment trajectories of these young people, adolescents, and children.
Education is deeply related to the possibility of accessing a suitable job, therefore, when students fail to acquire the necessary skills for their adequate labor inclusion, the options to generate income that allow them to satisfy their basic needs are significantly reduced.
The regional organization of the United Nations has already been able to quantify the first impacts of the pandemic on the lives of young people in the Caribbean and Latin America: the group between 18 and 24 years of age who neither study nor work for pay increased from 22.3 % in 2019 to 28.7% in 2020, especially affecting young women (36% compared to 22% of men).
Although young people are the most exposed to poverty, Latin America as a whole has not yet managed to return to the levels registered before the pandemic.
ECLAC projects in its report that by the end of 2022 poverty will be at 32.1% of the population (201 million people) and extreme poverty at 13.1% (82 million).
These figures present a slight decrease compared to 2021, but reveal that there are still 27 million more poor people in the region than before the health crisis.
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