Leonardo Bispo Dos Santos takes a container of rice and beans at a feeding station in Rio de Janeiro. He spends his days waiting for food.
Photographer: Dado Galdieri/BloombergCovid’s Shockwaves Took Poverty in Latin America to a New Nadir
As hard-won gains erode, the region risks ‘a long-term loss of human capital’
The Covid-19 pandemic has sent a wave of poverty racing across Latin America, deepening declines that began over the past decade and consigning millions to lives of deprivation.
The world’s most unequal region saw 22 million people — the equivalent of everyone in New York state — join the ranks of the poor from 2019 to 2020, unable to meet basic needs. In all, about one-third of Latin America’s roughly 600 million residents live in poverty or what the United Nations defines as extreme poverty: subsisting on less than $1.90 a day.