Caribbean & Central America - November 2015 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Inequality down: On 14 October Panama’s economy and finance minister, Dulcidio de la Guardia, gave a press conference in which he told reporters that for the first time in 23 years, the Gini coefficient that measures income inequality (where 0 is perfect equality and 1 perfect inequality) was below 0.50 last year for Panama for the first time in 23 years, registering 0.49. Pointing to an overall decline in poverty – from 25% (of the population of some 3.99m) in 2014 to 22% in 2015 – De la Guardia said that this downward trend looks to have been maintained this year, registering 0.48 in March 2015.

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