Dominicans’ remittances keep poverty at bay: ECLAC

Santo Domingo.- If it were not for the remittances that Dominicans send to the country, poverty in the Dominican Republic would reach 27.2% of the population, instead of 25%.

The figures are in the most recent report “Social Panorama of Latin America 2019” by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

“And these money transfers stop in such a way a safe destination towards greater social exclusion in some homes, than when ECLAC did the exercise of measuring the absence of remittances exclusively on the families that receive them – without taking into account the rest of the Dominican households – estimated that the poverty rate between these households would double, and be 61%,” the report said.

That means that six out of every 10 households that receive remittances would be poor if they did not receive financial assistance from their relatives living abroad.

“In two of the five countries where poverty fell sharply (Dominican Republic and El Salvador), the increase in transfer income was entirely due to the increase in remittances.”