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Costa Rica’s poor are quickly getting poorer

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La Carpio, a low income neighborhood of San Jose (Archive Photo)

Editor’s note: Some of the wording in this story was modified on Friday Nov 6 at 1:53 p.m. to reflect that the numbers indicated in the story are household income, not personal income.

November 6th, 2015 (ICR News) Costa Rica’s poor are quickly getting poorer, according to a recent analysis by Costa Rican financial newspaper, El Financiero.

 

Based on census data from 2010 to 2015, the poorest 20 percent of Costa Rica’s households have seen their income decrease by 17 percent over the last five years, even when adjusted for inflation.

 

The poorest 20 percent of Costa Rica’s households – in census terms, the 1st quintile – saw their average inflation-adjusted earnings (or “constant colones”) income drop from ¢234,819 per month in 2010 to ¢194,541 per month in 2015.

 

Costa Rica’s census bureau known as INEC divides households into five quintiles, with the first being the country’s poorest and the fifth quintile being the country’s highest income earners.

 

Only the fourth quintile in the study actually witnessed an increase in earnings over the last 5 years, increasing from an inflation-adjusted average of ¢1,091,577 per month in 2010 (2015 colones) to ¢1,108,594 per month in 2015, an increase of just 2 percent.

 

The second quintile suffered a 1 percent decline in earnings, while the 3rd quintile as well as Costa Rica’s highest earning households, the 5th quintile, stagnated.

 

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  • gc

    yeah well, if you look at countries with “fiscal reform”, “workers rights”, that target tax business and the rich, lots of health and education benefits and a vibrant public sector you will be hard pressed to not see declining incomes, rising poverty and high illegitimacy rates.

  • prdatki

    I believe some of the poor are too lazy to work. I know several women who complain of not have money but if you mention maybe they should go to work? This puts fear into them !

    • gc

      oscar arias noted the primary cause of poverty is the behavior of the poor, but that is not fair when you have nanny state cultures encouraging dysfunction.

      • mhogan

        Keep the populace uneducated, that always helps. Works in the U.S.A. with the dumbing down of society. When you don’t have to go to work every morning as a productive member of society, you have lots of free time to protest conservative principles. With a Community Organizer as head of state, lots of minions out there riling up “da peoples”.

        • gc

          every welfare state is the same. they differ only in degree of totalitarianism. the political class and their thug public employees lie and live off the labor of the people and the over borrow on the equity of their labor supported by an academia that is brainless. you see the signs everywhere in Nicaragua. the lie: Ariba los pobres de el mundo. Christianidad, solidaridad y patria. it is the same in every welfare state including the USA. stupid academics believe the tripe they spout and call everyone that sees it for the Animal Farm that social democracy is ignorant, low info, or greedy. you even have totalitarian social democrats posing as academics writing lying propaganda about “human freedom”. pathetic sick joke is all they are.

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