The World Bank presents its report on poverty in the UDA

The 5 of December the World Bank made its presentation of the report "Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2018: Arming the Puzzles of Poverty" in the Multiple Use Room of the University of Azuay.

After the welcome given by the Academic Vice-Rector, Martha Cobos, the Argentine economist María Ana Lugo, one of the authors of the report, explained that before the institution analyzed extreme poverty following exclusively monetary patterns.

"Everyone who spent less than a dollar 90 cents a day for their minimum needs was considered poor, but in this report we have supplemented this information with other variables such as access to health, education, basic services, security."

Then Roberto Castillo, Director of the National Institute of Statistics and Census of Ecuador, said that poverty should not be understood in dichotomous terms - "you are poor or you are not poor" - but as something more complex than simply the kilocalories that are consume per day.

Silvia Mejía, an economist at the University of Cuenca, said that poverty should not be just a measure: "We must think about the subject, who the poor are and where they are."

Finally, Esteban Segarra, a professor at the UDA Law School, said that the World Bank should not focus only on measuring poverty, "but also on how to fight it".

After the presentation of the panelists there was a time for the questions of the assistants.