De volta a reducao da pobreza na América Latina - Washington Post

Um editorial do Washington Post que foca na melhoria das condições sociais na América Latina. Independentemente desses progressos, não custa lembrar que a América Latina continua sendo a região mais desigual do planeta, e que essa desigualdade tem a ver basicamente com a educação (ou falta de).
Aparentemente, se depender disso, vai demorar ainda um bocado para a região melhorar de verdade.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

The Latin upbeat

Editorial Washington Post, December 24, 2011

WE INTERRUPT the current gloom about the global economy to bring you a word about progress. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the portion of the population living in poverty fell substantially from 1990 to 2010, from 48.4 percent to 31.4 percent, according to a new United Nations report. And this occurred as the population grew from 440.7 million to 582 million.
The news about the rate of extreme poverty is even better: it fell from 22.6 percent in 1990 to 12.3 percent last year. This means that Latin America has almost met the goal, set by the United Nations in 2000, of reducing extreme poverty to half the 1990 rate by 2015. And there’s more: Latin America’s notoriously unequal income distribution is becoming less so. The U.N. report, prepared by its Economic Commission for Latin America in Santiago, Chile, suggests that the Gini coefficient, a widely used measure of inequality, steadily declined in 10 Latin countries over the past decade.
What went right? Latin America endured a “lost decade” of slow growth during the 1980s, as a consequence of which both poverty and inequality rose. That long bust resulted from a previous spate of artificial debt-fueled growth. But the structural reforms that countries enacted as the price of debt relief have, over time, paid off in the form of more durable, broader-based prosperity. Freer trade among Latin countries, and between Latin America and the United States, helped, too.
The region’s governments increased spending on health, education and social benefits — and targeted those resources more efficiently to the neediest. Across the region, better education and health care for women, coupled with more freedom and democracy (except in Cuba, Venezuela and their clients), contributed to declining fertility rates. This enabled women to earn more, and families to devote more time and resources to each of their children.
The results have been most dramatic in the largest Latin American nation, Brazil, which is now so prosperous that it is being looked to for help in bailing out Europe. Between 2003 and 2009, the share of Brazil’s population living on $2 per day or less fell from 22 percent to 7 percent, according to the World Bank, whose loans supported Brazil’s anti-poverty programs. But the second-largest country, Mexico, also has bounced back from a sharp recession in 2009; Wells Fargo Securities Economic Group forecasts that Mexico’s economy will grow 4.3 percent in 2012 — double the predicted U.S. rate. Inequality has eased there as well.Notably, Mexico, like another U.S. friend, Colombia, kept its economy moving despite struggling against drug-related violence.
Obviously all is not perfect in Latin America. Cuba still stagnates, and Venezuela under Hugo Chavez is burdened by crime and inflation. Millions of Latin Americans engaged in farming and informal urban employment have yet to share in the benefits of growth. Some Latin countries remain dependent on commodity prices; China’s raw-material shopping spree has buoyed them, but probably can’t last forever.
But the basic trends are positive — much more so than many would have predicted based on the region’s predicament at the end of the 1980s. Latin America is reaping the fruits of reform, openness and hard work. There’s a lesson in that for the whole world.