Poverty in panama

"I wanted to share with you this article about poverty in Panamá, because we have to know it situation is not only happening in Africa it happens here too, many family live in bad condition without enough money to solve family necessities"

Despite the country’s strong economic growth, poverty levels remain high in Panama. Nationwide, according to 2008 data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), 28.6 per cent of the population is poor and 11.7 per cent is extremely poor. The incidence of poverty is particularly high in rural areas, where about 45.8 per cent of the population are poor and about 23.6 per cent of rural people live in extreme poverty.

Among the indigenous population, poverty rates are even higher. Across the country, more than 80.5 per cent of Panama’s indigenous peoples live below the poverty line, and about 51.9 per cent are extremely poor. Indigenous peoples are also the most rapidly growing segment of the population, with an average growth rate that is more than double that of the country average.

In recent years there has been an increase in rural people’s migration to urban areas. Rural-urban migration, coupled with low demand for unskilled labourers in the country’s service-based economy, has led to an increase in urban poverty.

Who are Panama’s poor rural people?

Poverty in rural areas particularly affects:

• small subsistence farmers, who have inadequate links to local food markets
• landless and rural labourers, who depend on very small plots of rented or owned land for their incomes and household food supply or earn their livelihoods as wage labourers in rural enterprises
• indigenous peoples, who farm at a subsistence level, produce traditional handicrafts and perform seasonal agricultural work
• households headed by women, who eke out a living on small plots of land and engage in microenterprises or in wage labour

Where are the country’s poor people?

Poverty is deeper in rural areas, and especially in indigenous areas.. Poor rural people are concentrated in areas where conditions for intensive agriculture are unfavourable, a situation that is aggravated by the deterioration of natural resources and by climatic restrictions, as in the Azuero Peninsula.

Why are people poor?

Poverty in Panama in general, and rural poverty in particular, are the result of inequalities created by an urban, service-oriented economy that offers few economic opportunities and almost no basic services to people living in rural areas, including indigenous peoples. Rural people suffer from a lack of productive assets and from the low quality of assets. And for rural communities living in remote locations, the lack of rural roads limits access to education and health services, as well as to markets.