SANTIAGO, Chile, Feb 22, CMC – The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean has released a new report providing a statistical overview of the socio-demographic, economic and environmental development of countries in the region.
ECLAC said that the publication, which it describes as one of its “most important publications,” contributes to generating knowledge about Latin America and the Caribbean and “is therefore an essential reference for the comparative analysis of countries with descriptive statistical data”.
It said that “The STATISTICAL Yearbook 2025,” is divided into three chapters with the first chapter exploring demographic and social aspects, including indicators on population, labour, education, health, housing and basic services, poverty and income distribution, and gender.
“In the social realm, the main novelty is that this edition incorporates the results of the Multidimensional Poverty Index for Latin America, which was presented in April 2025. The data corresponding to 2024 shows profound gaps between the region’s countries. On a regional level, multidimensional poverty affects 27.4 per cent of the population, with great dispersion among countries.
“Overall, the results confirm that multidimensional poverty continues to be a structural challenge in the region and stress the need for differentiated and sustained public policies,” ECLAC added.
It said gender inequalities manifested in the indicators in a cross-cutting way. In particular, women between 20 and 59 years of age face higher levels of poverty than men in the same age group. In 2024, women aged 20 to 59 who live in urban areas have a poverty rate that is 1.28 times greater than that of men in the same age group. In the case of rural areas, the difference is 1.15 times greater.
The second chapter of the publication presents economic information that includes statistics on national accounts, the external sector and price indices.
It shows that economic activity in the region continues to exhibit moderate growth. In 2025, regional growth is estimated at 2.4 percent, with subregions performing differently.
“While South America has limited growth (2.9 per cent in 2025), the group made up of Central America and Mexico marks a deceleration due to the evolution of the Mexican economy (one per cent in 2025). In the Caribbean, aggregate growth varies notably depending on whether Guyana is included or excluded (5.5 per cent versus 1.9 percent in 2025, respectively), reflecting heterogeneity in the subregion’s production dynamics.”
ECLAC said that the domestic scenario is compounded by the complex evolution of the external sector. After registering declines in 2023, goods exports and imports show signs of a moderate recovery (3.6 per cent and 3.2 per cent in 2024, respectively), although with uneven performances between countries.
The information in the Yearbook also allows for observing changes in the composition of foreign trade, in the terms of trade, and in the current account balance of Latin America and the Caribbean (-2.8 per cent in 2024), along with the relative weight of intraregional trade, which remains limited.
The third chapter in the publication offers environmental statistics from the region. These include metrics on physical conditions; land cover; ecosystems; biodiversity; energy, water and biological resources; emissions; environmental quality; climate change; and extreme events and disasters.
ECLAC notes that Latin America and the Caribbean is a region that is highly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, which are manifested in phenomena such as floods, storms, droughts and landslides, among others.
According to updated figures, in 2024 there were 82 hazardous events and natural disasters directly affected more than 12 million people and caused the loss of more than 800 lives. The total cost of the damage and economic losses related, directly or indirectly, to these disasters in the region was US$21.777 billion dollars.
Over the last 34 years, the region has seen its forest area shrink, and it has lost natural forests in particular, both in absolute terms as well as relative to overall land area. Between 1990 and 2023, the proportion of regional forest cover has decreased systematically from 53 to 46 per cent of the territory from 1.07 billion hectares to 909 million hectares).
In this same period, the loss of land area covered by forests throughout the region totaled 160 million hectares. Despite this decline, the region is still home to one-fifth of the world’s forests.
The report also addresses environmental quality by analyzing air pollution, which poses a significant risk to human health. The results show that none of the countries in the region complies with the World Health Organization’s (WTO) guidelines regarding particulate matter.
CMC/hf/ir/2026