Poverty in Peru is deepest in remote rural areas. Millions of Peruvians – more than half the country’s people – struggle to survive, making out an existence below the poverty line. Close to one fourth of them live in extreme poverty.
Lack of opportunities for rural people has caused a massive migration to urban areas, where market activity offers poor people opportunities for survival. Three out of every four Peruvians live in urban areas. The majority of Peru’s poor people live in and around Lima, the capital.
People born in Lima can expect to live almost 20 years longer than people born in the southern highlands. Urban dwellers can earn 30 times as much as poor farmers. Although poverty affects both urban and rural people in Peru, the deepest poverty is rooted in rural areas, where it is a structural problem and where food insecurity is chronic in most communities.
Who are Peru’s rural poor people?
The poorest of the poor are indigenous peoples living in remote areas in the southern highlands. There, about 73 per cent of the indigenous Quechua and Aymara communities – more than 5 million people – live below the poverty line.
Rural women are the worst affected. The majority of rural women are poor, and nearly 70 per cent of them are extremely poor. Rural women play an important role in the subsistence economy. They work in agriculture and tend livestock, and they engage in income-generating activities. Women may represent as much as 80 per cent of a family’s labour force. Thanks to their productive activities, in addition to traditional household tasks and child care, women make it possible for their husbands to migrate in search of temporary work.
Where are Peru’s rural poor people?
Nearly nine out of ten rural poor people are in the arid Andean highlands, where they produce basic food crops at a subsistence level. Most are indigenous people.
Why are rural people poor in Peru?
Rural poverty has its roots in:
- high rates of illiteracy, particularly among women
- lack of essential services such as education and electrical power
- lack of secure property rights to land, forests and water
- inadequate agricultural research, training and financial services
- ineffective animal and plant health services
- poor transport infrastructure and marketing systems
- lack of well-defined territorial organization and planning
Source: IFAD
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