MAIN FINDINGS OF THE REPORT:
- Unequal poverty reduction: More than 16 million Colombians live in poverty, with regions such as La Guajira and Chocó being especially hard hit. The gap is widening because poorer municipalities are not reducing poverty at the same rate as better-off ones.
- Unequal access to public services: Learning poverty has reached 100 percent in a number of municipalities and 90 percent of infant deaths are preventable with adequate care, reflecting unequal access to essential services.
- Fewer economic opportunities: Poorer departments have low formal employment and connectivity levels, limiting access to quality services and jobs.
- Low social mobility: At least 30 percent of labor income inequality is determined by circumstances at birth. An individual’s well-being is closely tied to that of their parents, especially in some departments.
- Need for institutional strengthening: Local governments are grappling with revenue generation and fiscal management challenges, and limited coordination across municipal governments restricts their ability to better serve their populations.
The report titled “Trajectories: Prosperity and Poverty Reduction in the Colombian Territory” examines the factors that make it difficult for many persons to lead productive lives in Colombia and escape poverty, and how this capacity is persistently different across municipalities and departments. It also explores the factors that contribute to poverty gaps and proposes public policy options to address them.
Colombia has made great strides in reducing poverty, even in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, not all social groups have had the same opportunities to escape poverty, and there are significant disparities in well-being across the entire territory. These disparities are largely due to the State’s uneven capacity to deliver public services across departments and municipalities for several decades, resulting in fewer opportunities for many to accumulate essential assets, such as quality education and health, formal land ownership, and decent housing.
The limited access to assets results in fewer economic opportunities, including lower-quality jobs and very low social mobility. Spatial disparities often overlap with the greater needs of certain population groups, such as Indigenous Peoples.
The low accumulation of assets imposes further hardship on many individuals and families who are forced to move within the country either to escape conflict situations or because of a lack of access to quality basic services in their places of origin. As a result, they cannot always leverage the best economic opportunities available at their destinations, which are usually cities. Even when people do not migrate within the country, long distances and inadequate connectivity with economic centers can limit access to services and jobs in many regions.
While economic growth can be uneven, access to opportunities should not be.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?
Priority should be accorded to the following:
- Investing in people’s assets and in access to quality services, including by reducing distances to opportunities through improved physical and digital connectivity, can help increase the returns on those assets as well as incomes, and help people leverage the benefits of migration within the country, if they wish to move.
- Strengthening institutions at all levels of government—their technical and fiscal capacity and their capacity to coordinate and establish partnerships to achieve economies of scale in service delivery—to better serve the poor throughout the country and promote local development.
Policy design must take account of the territory’s heterogeneous needs and capacities and the importance of coordinating across the key actors. In addition, there is value in providing an integrated package of services to address various barriers while reducing poverty. Closing the gaps in opportunities across population groups and territories is not a short-term undertaking. However, there are a number of policy options available to us, and the country can highlight many success stories in this effort.