Latin America Gains in Slashing Child Poverty Under Threat of 'Sliding Back': UN

Children in Latin America are the best off out of children from developing regions, according to a UNICEF report released Tuesday.

Despite this, inequality is still the highest of any region and extreme poverty, while almost eliminated, still looms for the “moderate” poor.

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The State of the World’s Children report notes Latin America as an example of a region that has significantly expanded its middle class and halved rates of extreme poverty between the mid-1990s and 2011, but notes that, “38 per cent of the population lived on a daily income of between US$4 and US$10 a day in 2013, at risk of slipping back into extreme poverty.”

While the report defines extreme poverty as living over US$1.90 a day, the above numbers are from the World Bank, which draws the line at US$2.50 and vulnerability to poverty as US$4.10 a day or less.

The U.N. also released a report earlier in the month citing that thanks to investments in social programs and wealth redistribution policies over the past 15 years, approximately 72 million Latin Americans were lifted out of poverty and a further 94 million moved into the middle class.

However, according to the UNDP, 2015 and 2016 saw a rise in the number of people living in poverty in the region for the first time in decades.

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Overall, nine groupings of world regions, excluding most OECD countries, show a “gap between the rhetoric of leaving no one behind, and the reality of what donors and governments do is very, very stark,” said the report’s lead author, Kevin Watkins, to the Guardian.

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According to the report’s metrics, though, Latin America and the Caribbean’s donors and governments have gone far to improve the quality of life of its children. Among the regions, Latin America and the Caribbean receiving the least amount of development aid, yet spent the highest percentage of its public budget on health and education and the least on its military — including when compared to the United States, according to data from 2009 to 2013.

Only one other region, Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states, came close, tying in high rates of contraceptive use and near gender parity on literacy rates and holding a slightly lower rate of extreme poverty. Latin America and the Caribbean surpassed the United States in its annual GDP growth rate and in female enrollment in secondary education, with more women enrolled than men.

Still, the region had the highest inequality rates, with 12 percent of household income held by the poorest 40 percent of the population and 55 percent held by the top 20. The report said that the disparity has a direct effect on the quality of primary and secondary education, equated to a two-year gap in schooling between children in opposite income brackets.