In the DR, the poverty rate for women is 5.3 percentage points higher than for men, according to the Social Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean 2024
The Dominican Republic had a decrease of 2.2 percentage points in the poverty indicator and 0.2 percentage points in the extreme poverty indicator in 2023, compared to the previous year, according to ECLAC data.
However, the entity highlights that the country has the second highest poverty femininity index in Latin America, in first place is Uruguay, in third and fourth Costa Rica and Chilerespectively.
This index captures the extent to which insufficient economic resources affect women relatively more than men. In the DR, the poverty rate for women is 5.3 percentage points higher than for men, reveals the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
The entity’s figures highlight that at a general level the Dominican population in extreme poverty is 5% and poverty is around 18% by 2023. While the percentage of the Latin American population in poverty in 2023 was 27 .3%, a figure that represents a decrease of 1.5 percentage points compared to 2022. And the extreme poverty rate reached 10.6% of the region’s population.
The approach used by ECLAC to estimate poverty consists of classifying a person as living in poverty when the per capita income of their household is less than the value of the poverty line, the latter representing the level of income per person that allows meet the basic needs of all members of a household.
It points out that in the Gini index, which expresses the magnitude of inequality in income distribution, the country has lower levels than the regional average, that is, less unequal.
The index of 14 Latin American countries reached a simple average of 0.452 and that of the country is 0.387in 2023. It specifies that the country managed to reduce its Gini index by at least 1.6% compared to 2022, according to the report titled Social Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean 2024.
