Poverty increased in Latin America during 2016, reaching 30.7% of the regional population - some 186 million people - and after a decade of reduction in most countries, ECLAC warned today.

In the presentation of the report "Social Panorama of Latin America 2017" in Mexico City, the executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena, pointed out that in 2016 the number of people in poverty It reached 186 million, including 61 million in extreme poverty.

The main reason for the increase in poverty is the slowdown in regional economic growth and, above all, the increase in poverty in two large nations of the region such as Brazil and Venezuela, said Bárcena.

In 2014, 28.5% of the population of the region was in a situation of poverty, and in 2016 the percentage rose to 30.7%. In this same period, extreme poverty went from 9% to 10.2%.

Although the data is better than in 2002, when there was 45.9% poverty, we have to definitively break the scourge of poverty.

The representative of ECLAC stressed that the projections for 2017 estimate that poverty levels will be maintained, increasing the number of poor by one million.

Poverty especially affects women, who suffer from this situation up to 25% more than men. Not only is the percentage higher, but it also worries that the trend, instead of stabilizing, is accentuating.

Equally alarming is the case of minors, since in 2016 46.7% of Latin Americans aged 0 to 14 were poor.

The fact that poverty has the face of a child is very worrying because it means that our child population is not receiving the benefits yet, and it is the population that will soon be an economically active population, and we leave it behind