Weekly Report - 28 July 2022 (WR-22-30)

ECUADOR | Poverty decreases. On 24 July, Ecuador’s national statistics institute (Inec) released new figures on poverty, which show that 25.0% of Ecuadoreans were living in poverty as of June 2022, a reduction of 7.2 percentage points on June 2021, and down from 25.5% in June 2019. According to the same figures, 10.7% were living in extreme poverty in June 2022, down from 14.7% in June 2021 but up from 9.5% in June 2019. The report shows that poverty remains significantly higher in rural areas (49.2%) in comparison with urban areas (16.7%). Inec also reported an improvement in the Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality in which 0 indicates perfect equality and 1 equals maximal inequality), noting that Ecuador’s Gini co-efficient was 0.453 in June 2022, down from 0.493 in June 2021.