Peru has seen Latin America’s greatest increase in people who have shifted out poverty into a growing middle class, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
"Between 2000 and 2012, Peru became the country in Latin America and the Caribbean with the largest number of people lifted from poverty into the middle class, being the nation with the highest relative increase in this group (19.1 percentage points),” it was stated in a new report by UNDP.
According to the “Profile of social groups in Latin America: the poor, the vulnerable and the middle class,” Peru's poverty levels in the said period fell from 50.5% to 24.2%, while the number of people moving into the middle class increased from 15.2 % to 34.3%.
In the region, the poor population (composed of those earning less than $4 a day) dropped from 41.7% in 2000 to 25.3% in 2012, while the middle class (people earning between $10-50 a day) grew by 82 million people, from 21.9% of the population in 2000 to 34.3% in 2012.
Despite the progress, the UNDP warned that the vulnerable population (those earning between US$4 and US$10 a day) has slightly grown from 35% of the Latin-American population in 2000 to 38 percent in 2012.
The report has assessed 18 countries in the region and was launched in El Salvador to complement a global analysis on vulnerability and resilience presented in Tokyo on 24 August.
(END) MDV/DLG/RMB
Published: 8/28/2014