Population, territory and sustainable development

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Table IV.11
LATIN AMERICA: POOR POPULATION BY GEOGRAPHICAL AREA, AROUND 2000 AND 2010
(Percentage of total population in each geographical area)
Country
Total Urban Rural
2000 2010 2000 2010 2000 2010
Bolivia (Plurinational State of) 62.4 54.0 52.0 42.4 79.2 75.8
Brazil 37.5 24.9 34.1 22.1 55.2 39.3
Chile 20.2 11.5 19.7 11.7 23.7 10.4
Colombia 54.2 44.3 48.7 38.5 69.6 62.7
Costa Rica 20.3 18.5 17.5 17.0 24.3 20.8
Ecuador 48.3 39.2 45.2 37.1 54.5 43.2
El Salvador 48.9 46.6 39.4 41.1 62.4 55.8
Guatemala 60.2 54.8 45.3 42.0 68.0 66.5
Honduras 77.3 67.4 66.7 56.3 86.1 76.5
Mexico 41.1 36.3 32.3 32.3 54.7 42.9
Nicaragua 69.4 61.9 63.9 54.4 77.1 71.5
Panama 36.9 25.8 26.2 15.1 54.6 44.8
Paraguay 59.7 54.8 50.1 46.5 70.9 66.6
Peru 54.7 31.3 42.0 19.1 78.4 54.2
Dominican Republic 47.1 41.4 42.4 39.6 55.9 45.2
Uruguay 17.7 8.4 18.1 8.6 12.6 4.2
Latin America 43.9 31.4 38.3 26.0 62.4 52.6
Source: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), on the basis of special tabulations of data from
household surveys conducted in the relevant countries.
Between the early years of the 2000s and around 2010 rural poverty fell in all the countries which
report these data, and rural indigence rose in only two countries (see figure IV.6), tracking the national
averages fairly closely. In this period, rural poverty decreased by over 50% in Chile and Uruguay and
significantly —by around 30%— in Brazil and Peru. Nicaragua, Paraguay, the Plurinational State of
Bolivia and Guatemala, by contrast, show the smallest reductions in rural poverty—by less than 5% in the
case of the last two countries. Most countries have made great strides in reducing extreme poverty,
especially Peru (by 54.6%), Uruguay (by 54.2%), Chile (by 47.6%) and Brazil (by 45.7%), with the
smallest reductions seen in the Dominican Republic (7.3%) and the Plurinational State of Bolivia (6.2%).
Most worrisome, however, is the fact that Paraguay and Guatemala saw the proportion of the indigent
population rise in rural areas (by 1.1% and 12.2%, respectively) (see figure IV.6).
Yet, in all, poverty and indigence remain substantially higher among the rural than among the
urban population. The sole exceptions are Chile and Uruguay, where rural poverty is less than urban
poverty; and Costa Rica, where there is no significant difference (see figure IV.6).
In their study of rural poverty at the household level, Rodríguez and Meneses (2011) classify rural
households in four categories: (i) agricultural households, whose employed members obtain 100% of their
labour income from agriculture; (ii) non-agricultural households, whose employed members obtain 100% of
their labour income from non-agricultural activities; (iii) multi-activity households, whose employed
members obtain labour income from both agricultural and non-agricultural activities; and (iv) transferdependent
households, all of whose income comes from transfers, i.e. they receive no labour income.