Poverty and Shared Prosperity in Colombia : Background Paper for Policy Notes

Colombia's solid economic growth since early 2000s has led to significant social improvements. Since the turn of the century, extreme poverty in Colombia almost halved, falling from 17.7 percent in 2002 to 7.4 percent in 2017. Similarly, moderate poverty fell from 49.7 percent to 26.9 percent over the same period (Figures 1 and 2). In absolute terms, the number of poor individuals in Colombia declined from about 20 million in 2002 to approximately 12.8 million in 2017. The downward trend in poverty was halted in 2016, however it went back to its downward trend on 2017. From 2016 to 2017 both moderate poverty and extreme poverty decrease in 1.1 percentage points (p.p.), moderate poverty went from 28 to 26.9 percent, while, extreme poverty was 8.5 percent in 2016 and 7.4 in 2017. Such decrease was primarily driven by a lower incidence of poverty in rural areas, where extreme and moderate poverty rates fell respectively by 2.7 and 2.6 pagesp. Similarly, the urban areas saw a reduction of moderate poverty (from 24.9 to 24.2 percent), while extreme poverty rate has remained virtually flat since 2014, at around 5 percent