SANTIAGO, Chile – The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has released its annual statistical overview of the socio-demographic, economic and environmental development of the regional countries.
ECLAC said the “Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean 2023,” serves as a reference for those seeking descriptive statistical data that is comparable between countries and over time.
It said that the current edition contains information available as of mid-December 2023 and is divided into three chapters.
The first explores demographic and social aspects, including indicators on population, work, education, health, housing and basic services, poverty and income distribution, and gender.
In the social arena, the report emphasises that the percentage of people living in poverty declined in 2022 to pre-pandemic levels, reaching 29 per cent.
“For the first time, this year’s edition includes information on the poverty situation at the level of the largest administrative division (country subdivision), which enables a comparative regional perspective on how the lack of income is manifested geographically,” ECLAC said.
The most recent figures show that household size is continually decreasing. Households had 3.4 people on average as of 2022, while in 2010 the figure was 3.9 people, with significant gaps remaining between socioeconomic groups: the households in the lowest-income quintile have 1.7 people more than the households in the highest-income quintile.
The makeup of households has also changed notably in the last 12 years, with growth in one-person households and couples without children and a decline in extended households.
Attendance at tertiary educational establishments shows great heterogeneity between socioeconomic groups and areas. In urban areas, while 52.9 per cent of the population aged 20 to 24 from the wealthiest quintile participates in the higher education process, only 26.7 per cent of the poorest quintile is in a similar situation. These percentages drop to 28.5 percent and 15.4 per cent, respectively, in rural areas.
The second chapter presents economic information referring to national accounts, balance of payments, foreign trade and price indices, among other indicators.
The Yearbook states that in 2023, the region’s economies saw their gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate decelerate to an estimated 2.2 per cent from four per cent, the previous year .
ECLAC said although all the subregions experienced lower growth in 2023 versus 2022, there is notable heterogeneity between countries. South America grew by 1.5 per cent (3.8 per cent in 2022), the group made up of Central America and Mexico by 3.5 per cent (4.1 per cent in 2022), and the Caribbean (without including Guyana) expanded by 3.4 per cent (6.4percent in 2022).
In addition to the complex domestic scenario in the region, the external sector is currently unfavorable.
In 2022, Latin America and the Caribbean had a current account deficit in its balance of payments of 2.7 per cent of GDP, with a deterioration in the region’s overall trade balance, affected by 22.7 per cent growth in goods and services imports, which exceeded the 19.7 per cent expansion in its exports.
The third chapter offers environmental statistics from the region. These include metrics on physical conditions; land cover; ecosystems; biodiversity; energy, water and biological resources; emissions; environmental quality; climate change; and extreme events and disasters.
ECLAC said Latin America and the Caribbean is a region that is highly vulnerable to the negative consequences of climate change: floods, storms, drought and landslides, among others.
It said in the 2016-2023 period, 90 dangerous events and disasters took place, directly affecting more than 52.8 million people and killing 5,600 people.
“The value of all the damage and economic losses related to disasters, directly or indirectly, rose to US$123 billion dollars,” ECLAC said, noting that the region is home to 23 per cent of the world’s forests, even as forest area and natural forests in particular have shrunk in the last 30 years.
Between 1990 and 2020, the proportion of regional forest cover has decreased systematically from 53 to 46 per cent of the territory, from 1.07 billion hectares to 932 million hectares. In this same period, the loss of land area covered by forests throughout the region totaled 138 million hectares.
The Statistical Yearbook is published in a print version and an online format that include a selection of tables and graphs aimed at providing a summary of the statistical information from a regional perspective.
The information underpinning the Yearbook is part of the set of statistics available on CEPALSTAT, a platform that gives access to all the updated statistical information from the region’s countries that is collected, systematized and published by ECLAC, enabling visualization of the region’s statistics in distinct territories through its Geoportal.
