Poverty in the Dominican Republic went from 23.36% to 23.85% in 2021, for an increase of 0.49 percentage points compared to 2020, according to data released this Monday by the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development.
Meanwhile, extreme poverty registered a reduction of 0.45 percentage points, after going from 3.51% in 2020 to 3.06% in 2021, according to the data that is part of the Bulletin of Official Monetary Poverty Statistics.
Monetary poverty is directly related to the real income of the homeswhich decreased 3.83% as a result of the combined effect of the increase in nominal income and inflation, which reached 8.5% in 2021, the information underlined.
In the note, the owner of Economy, Miguel Ceara Hattonstated that if inflation had been projected for 2021, that is, 4%, the general poverty rate would have been 1.75 percentage points less than that registered in 2020.
In short, he stated, “if the inflationary problem caused by the global pandemic had not arisen, the impact of the pandemic on poverty would have been reversed.”
The note also highlighted that in 2021 there was a significant recovery of employment lost during the crisis. The total number of employed persons stood at 4.7 million between October and December, “which allows us to affirm that the number of employed persons from the period prior to the start of the covid-19 pandemic has effectively recovered.”
The Dominican Republic was one of the Latin American countries with greater economic growth, with an expansion of 12.3% of economic activity, according to data from the Central Bank.
