More than 21% of Costa Rican households live in poverty. This figure is 1.1 percentage points higher than in 2017, a variation that is statistically significant, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census.
Extreme poverty -those households whose income is not enough to cover basic food needs- stood at 6.3%, with an increase of 0.6 percentage points over the previous year.
In absolute numbers, households in poverty are estimated at 328,848 and 99,043 of these are in extreme poverty. This includes 1,142,000 people.
According to the INEC, the Central region of the country has a lower level of poverty (16.7%), compared to the Brunca region, where poverty afflicts 32% of households.
The only region that showed a decrease in the level of poverty was the Central Pacific, which went from 29.9% in 2017 to 25.7% this year. On the other hand, the Chorotega region showed the most significant variation in poverty , going from 22% in 2017 to 26% in 2018.
INEC authorities believe that one aspect that contributes to the increase in the level of poverty is that the per capita income is stagnant, while the threshold of the poverty line did increase by 1.7% in the urban area and 1.4% in the rural area.
On the other hand, the income of households of the poorest 20% of the country decreased by 5.5% in the urban area, while it grew by 2.2% in the rural area.
Edwin Madrigal, INEC researcher, explained that the poverty line is calculated by comparing the nominal cost of a basic basket with the income per capita on a monthly basis. If the income is greater than the consumption basket, the household is not poor. A different poverty line is estimated for the urban area and the rural area.
The results of poverty come from the National Household Survey. The data collection was carried out in two phases.