Montevideo-. Poverty increased in Uruguay in the second half of 2021, mainly affecting children under the age of six, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
Among the results of a study by INE, it stands out that out of a thousand households, 76 live below the poverty line and, at an individual level, it accounts for 11 percent of those suffering from this social situation.
“The value of the proportion of poor people for the second half of 2021 implies that out of a thousand people, 110 of them do not exceed the minimum income to cover the basic and non-food needs considered by this method,” the institution states.
As for households below the need line, the INE estimate shows that they remained stable at 0.2 percent, and the index increased at the individual level, standing at 0.3 percent.
The authors of the study confirmed that in terms of racial or ethnic origin, “the Afro-descended population is the one that continues to experience the highest rates of poverty”. and it affects by almost 11 percentage points more those reporting this origin than those reporting a white background. The incidence of poverty also varies according to the gender of the householder, “which affects to a greater extent female-headed households, both in Montevideo as in the interior,” states the INE in another aspect of its analysis. .
In male-headed households, poverty appears to have declined from 6.1 percent in the first half of 2021 to 5.3 percent in the second, but instead the poverty rate rose from 8.5 to 9.5 with women at the top.
A 2020 University of the Republic investigation during the Covid-19 pandemic showed around 100,000 Uruguayans fell below the poverty line as pots popular to this day spread to alleviate a lack of purchasing power for food in the most vulnerable sectors.