The UN’s Anti-Poverty Proposal for Latin America: A “Basic Emergency Income” — CEPR

The economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Latin America could be potentially devastating, according to a new Special Report by the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The report, based on the available data in mid-April, has estimated a -5.3 percent drop for the region’s GDP growth in 2020 — the largest in the region’s history. If this is the case, ECLAC calculates, 29 million more people would be pushed into poverty and 16 million more into extreme poverty, alongside a dramatic increase in inequality in what is already the most unequal region in the world.

In the face of this potential disaster, the authors of the ECLAC report recommend a “basic emergency income” as an anti-poverty measure. The proposal could be a powerful tool for economic empowerment that can help millions survive the recession if paired with other measures, the paper argues.

You can read the rest at CEPR’s The Americas Blog.

Originally published at https://cepr.net on June 1, 2020.