ECLAC Launches New Edition of its Statistical Yearbook with Relevant Data on Latin America and the Caribbean’s Economic, Social and Environmental Situation

The 2024 version of this annual publication updates a selection of key statistics on the three pillars of development in the region.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) released today the Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean 2024, which can be accessed online and presents a statistical overview addressing the social, economic and environmental development of the region’s countries based on information that was available as of December 2024.

This annual publication, which is among the United Nations regional organization’s most important, serves as a reference for those seeking descriptive statistical data that is comparable between countries and over time.

The Statistical Yearbook 2024 is divided into three chapters. The first explores demographic and social aspects, including indicators on population, work, education, health, housing and basic services, poverty and income distribution, and gender.

In the social realm, the report emphasizes that on an aggregate level, poverty declined again in 2023, affecting 27.3% of the population. This percentage is the lowest on record for Latin America since 1990, although it is very similar to the figure seen in 2014. Nonetheless, there is marked heterogeneity: the incidence of poverty varies between 5% and more than 55%, depending on the country. These disparities are accentuated when this phenomenon is examined at the level of subnational divisions, where values can range from 0% to 80%, revealing sharp inequality within national borders.

In addition to the persistence of poverty, inequality remains high in the region. When income distribution among distinct population groups is analyzed, it can be seen that the 20% of people with the lowest income, as a whole, receives 4.8% of total income, while, at the other extreme of the distribution, the 20% with the highest income gets 50.5% of the total.

These inequalities extend to essential aspects such as education or the population’s living conditions. For example, educational attendance among young people from 20 to 24 years of age is 52.7% in the case of youth from urban households in the 20% segment with the highest income, compared with 27.1% for young people from urban households in the first income quintile. Meanwhile, overcrowding affects 49.2% of people in rural households from the 20% segment with the lowest income, whereas it only affects 17.3% of people in rural households from the highest income quintile.

The second chapter presents economic information referring to national accounts, balance of payments, foreign trade and price indices, among other indicators.

The Yearbook shows that economic activity in the region’s countries continues to grow at a low rate, reaching 1.8% in 2024, which was even lower than the previous year’s 2.3% rate. With the exception of the Caribbean, all the subregions showed lower growth in 2024 than in 2023. Thus, South America grew 1.5% (versus 1.7% in 2023); the group made up of Central America and Mexico expanded by 2.2% (versus 3.2% in 2023); while the Caribbean (without including Guyana) grew 2.6% (versus 2.4% in 2023).

The region’s complex domestic scenario is compounded by an unfavorable situation in the external sector. In 2023, Latin America and the Caribbean recorded declines of 2% and 6%, respectively, in goods exports and imports, which drastically reduced the deficit in the trade balance, allowing for a reduction as well in the deficit of the current account balance of payments, which reached 1.3% of GDP (versus 2.3% in 2022).

The third chapter 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.

Latin America and the Caribbean is a region that is highly vulnerable to the negative consequences of climate change: floods, storms, drought and landslides, among others. In 2024 alone, 56 hazardous events and natural disasters were recorded in the region, directly affecting more than 6 million people and causing the loss of more than 800 lives. The total cost of the damage and economic losses related directly or indirectly to these disasters was $10.21 billion dollars.

Since 1990, Latin America and the Caribbean has made significant progress on energy efficiency. The energy intensity of GDP, measured in terms of the primary energy supply, fell by 24%, while final energy consumption declined by 11%. All of this indicates that the region has been able to generate wealth using less energy, which translates into less pressure on the environment.

Meanwhile, the report notes that from 1990 to the present, there has been a 186% increase in the exportation of both renewable and non-renewable natural resources. However, the proportion of primary exports fell by 38%. Although this phenomenon reflects a certain degree of economic diversification, it also shows there is greater pressure on the region’s natural resources, with the associated environmental impact.

The Statistical Yearbook is published in a print version and an online format, both of which include a selection of tables and graphs aimed at providing a summary of the statistical information from a regional perspective. The interactive web version facilitates navigation and access to the information presented in the print version, linking graphs and statistical tables to the data series available in ECLAC’s databases, which allows for accessing information that is more detailed and refers to a much broader historical period. It also contains an additional chapter explaining methodological aspects and references to the data sources used.

The information underpinning the Yearbook is part of the set of statistics available on CEPALSTAT, a platform that gives access to all the updated statistical information from the region’s countries that is collected, systematized and published by ECLAC, enabling visualization of the region’s statistics in distinct territories through its Geoportal.

Given that most of this information comes from national statistical offices, central banks, international bodies and other official institutions, ECLAC invites users to pay attention to the sources and the technical notes presented in this publication. The data is obtained using international methodologies and standards with the aim of ensuring the greatest possible comparability between countries, which means that these figures may not necessarily coincide with national data.