The Urban Poor and the Pandemic

Many poor households across Latin America can not afford to 'stay at home'

With a fifth wave of infections and deaths running its course in Europe and the Americas, Covid-19 shows no sign of retreating. The disease itself, but also the conditions generated by government response to it interact with pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities in Latin America. This week we assess the impact of the pandemic on the ‘urban poor’

Inequalities in Latin America are embedded in social structures and institutions.

The social protests that marred the region in the first two years of the pandemic were an expression of grave suffering of populations against precarious and unequal access to public goods and services, the absence of a space to raise their voice in the political system and inadequate or insufficient government responses to the pandemic. The lack of inclusive social protection mechanisms exposed significant proportions of the region’s population to the loss of lives and livelihoods.

In the first wave of the pandemic the UN had argued that COVID-19 would exac…