Colombia, Honduras Are Most Unequal Countries in Latin America

teleSUR – March 10, 2016

Latin America has five of the world’s most unequal countries, with Honduras and Colombia being the region’s top two, according to statistics released by the World Bank Wednesday.

Using data from December, the World Bank calculated that Latin America is not the poorest region in the world, but is home to some of the world’s most unequal countries.

Among them are Honduras (6), Colombia (7), Brazil (8), Guatemala (9) and Panama (10), which all rank within the world’s top 10 most unequal countries.

The results were found by calculating each country’s Gini coefficient, what measures the income distribution in each nation, whereby nations approaching 0 have total equality and those approaching 100 have total inequality.

Colombia’s Gini coefficient ranked at 53.5, the same as 2012, while Honduras’ was 53.7 and plummeting dramatically, according to news reports.

In the current situation, the top 10 percent of Colombia’s richest people earn four times more than the bottom 40 percent of the population. Additionally, 77.6 percent of land in the country is owned by only 13.7 percent of the country’s inhabitants.

In Honduras, 64.5 percent of the population is living in poverty while 42.6 percent live in extreme poverty (less than US$2.5 a day), according to World Bank statistics.