ADVANCES IN POVERTY

Advances in poverty reduction in Latin America over the last decade and a half have been remarkable. With a $4 a day poverty line, the region’s population living in poverty fell from 45 to 25 percent between 2000 and 2014; and with a stricter poverty line—$2.5 per day—from 28 to 14 percent. Three more facts show the depth of this improvement. First, with some variation, poverty fell in every country in the region; second, poverty did not increase between 2008 and 2010, the critical years of the global financial crisis; and third, despite a substantial deceleration in the region’s growth rate since 2011, poverty has not increased either.