More than 76% of Venezuelans live in extreme poverty

Three out of four venezuelans They live in extreme poverty amid a long economic crisis complicated by confinements from the COVID-19 pandemic and fuel shortages, according to an academic study presented Wednesday.

76.6% of households suffer from extreme poverty, since their income does not cover their nutritional needs, and 94.5%, poverty, according to the results of the National Survey of Living Conditions 2021, coordinated by the private Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB).

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“We reached a ceiling of poverty”, while extreme poverty does continue to escalate, said sociologist Luis Pedro España at the presentation in Caracas of the survey, which estimates the population of Venezuela in 28.7 million inhabitants after more than five million emigrated since 2014.

Poverty in Venezuela, a country that suffers from severe hyperinflation and its eighth year of recession, increased from 91.5% in the 2019-2020 period and the extreme from 67.7%.

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The survey figures are far from those offered by the president Nicolás Maduro, who assured, in his rendering of accounts before Parliament, that 17% of the population lived in poverty in 2020 and only 4%, in extreme poverty.

Spain explained that 5.5% of the population that is located above the poverty line has been able to “index” their income to inflation and the depreciation of the local currency, the bolivar.

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“Mobility crisis”

There is a “mobility crisis” due to the quarantines applied in the last two years and the lack of gasoline due to the collapse of the Venezuelan oil industry, which has impacted on the number of active workers, Spain stressed.

Only 50% of Venezuelans of working age are active according to the survey, about 7.6 million. Women are the most affected, with only 32.9% of female workers in activity.

“Because in Venezuela are people leaving work? (…) The costs of going to work begin to be higher than the remuneration you are going to receive ”, expressed the specialist.

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The monthly minimum wage, supplemented by a mandatory food bonus, barely exceeds the equivalent of two dollars a month, insufficient to cover even transportation. This value has weakened so much that it is no longer a benchmark in the private sector, where the average income is about $ 50, according to business estimates.

Faced with collapse, 86.5% of households receive government aid and 20% remittances from relatives abroad.

However, the pandemic has hit remittances: 11% of households that had them in 2020 have stopped receiving them and 22% have seen them decrease in quantity and frequency.

Educational exclusion

“The pandemic came to us in a country that was already experiencing a semi-paralysis” due to the recession, highlighted by Anitza Freites, coordinator of the study, who highlighted the impact of the crisis on education.

Of the 11 million people of student age (3 to 24 years), only 65% ​​are enrolled in educational centers of different school levels, a 5% drop compared to 2020, Freitez pointed out.

The figure among potential college students (18-24 years old) barely reaches 17%.

90% of those who study have done so remotely in recent months due to covid-19, affected by failures in public services such as electricity and connectivity, and 70% report needs for internet access improvements.

Those responsible for the survey interviewed 17,402 families in 22 of the 24 states of Venezuela between February and April.

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Deshawn