Financial inclusion of small-scale rural producers: Trends and challenges

Between 1980 and 2002, the number of poor in Latin America grew by almost 90 million to 225 million people, equivalent to 43.9% of the region’s population (ECLAC, 2015). Thanks to a favourable economic environment, improvements in the labour market and the effect of prioritizing social policy on combating poverty and inequality, between 2002 and 2012 poverty fell by 15.7 percentage points to a level of 28.1% (ECLAC, 2015). During the same period, most countries in the region also managed to reduce income inequality. Nonetheless, since 2012 poverty and inequality levels have both remained broadly constant (ECLAC, 2016b).