New York City.- According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Dominican Republic, together with Brazil and Colombia, is one of the countries where wealth is most concentrated.

ECLAC (Cepal in Spanish) says that Latin America is “plagued by inequality, where 70% of its inhabitants earn less than their countries’ average”. As a result of this inequality, the richest 10% earn between 30-50% of wealth.

The greatest concentrations of wealth are found in Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. In contrast, the gap is narrower in Uruguay and Venezuela. This is compounded by the fact that poverty is increasingly concentrated within vulnerable groups like women, children and indigenous people.

However, poverty levels have reduced significantly in Latin America in 2007, a year in which for the first time only one in three of the continent’s inhabitants suffered hunger or social needs, according to government figures.

This drastic reduction was achieved by the best economic cycle in four decades, resulting in an increase of 3% in average per capita income between 2003 and 2007. During this period, 31 million people came out of poverty.

Currently, some 190 million Latin Americans are poor, and of these, 69 million cannot feed themselves on a daily basis, according to government statistics provided to ECLAC.