Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Brasilia (Agenzia Fides) – According to a study published by UN-Habitat, the UN agency for human settlements, Brazil is the country with the greatest inequality levels in Latin America: while 10 percent of the richest own 50.6% percent of wealth produced, 10 percent of the poorest receive only 0.8 percent of national income. The document also shows that other countries of the region, where one fifth of the wealthiest own 56.9% of the resources.
The countries with less inequality in the area, that is, Nicaragua, Panama and Paraguay, have still more serious differences with respect to any country of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Eastern Europe. Behind Brazil, in terms of unfair distribution of income, is Mexico, followed by Argentina and Venezuela. The study also confirms that although urbanization has helped reduce poverty, which in recent decades has indeed increased, it is equally true that the population living in rural areas and in small towns is on average poorer than city residents. In 1970, there were 41 million poor people in these cities, 25% of the population of that time, and in 2007 there were 127 million poor people, 29% of urban population. This shows that in Brazil, as much as 50.1 percent of the population living in the countryside live in poverty, showing a situation that is better than Colombia and Peru, but far from Mexico and Chile (CE) (Agenzia Fides 30/03/2010)
