Public policies for the fight against poverty may be classifying the rural poor with a different bar than reality. Analysis on recent statistical results.
Recently, DANE revealed the monetary poverty figures for 2020, the results showed that this was a dramatic year for a good part of the Colombian population: the figures show setbacks that take us back more than a decade. However, the results also show another very different circumstance: despite the difficult year, rural monetary poverty fell 5 percentage points (pp), which had not occurred since 2002. These results surprised many, because despite the fact that It was to be expected that the effects of the pandemic would be less severe in rural areas and that the agricultural sector performed well last year, the reduction was quite atypical. The urban-rural gap was practically closed in terms of monetary poverty.
The first explanation for this phenomenon is the effects of ordinary and extraordinary institutional aid, which reached a significant part of the rural population. This allowed the real income of rural households not to fall as it did in urban areas. According to DANE, the income of the lowest quintile increased by 7.2% in 2020, explained by a 12 pp drop in labor income but offset by a 20 pp increase in the role played by monetary aid . Likewise, it is important to point out that, in none of the quintiles, the real income of rural households fell and that only in the quintile with the highest income, this increase was explained mostly by the category of others. However, labor income is systematically reduced.
However, this effect, as Fedesarrollo and DANE itself warn in their statement, is also explained because the rural poverty line is much lower than the urban poverty line and that of the main cities, which implies that institutional aid allows, to an important part of households, exceed this threshold. The information that feeds this estimate is based on the CPI methodology, which is collected at the urban level, as is well stated in the Communiqué of the Poverty Experts of May 21, 2021.
The current estimate represents a significant methodological improvement by considering the diversity in terms of the basket at the level of the different cities, the information on the prices of the basic basket that represent the expenses of rural households comes from the urban areas of the cities of Mitú , Leticia, San José del Guaviare, InÃrida and Puerto Carreño.
There is no doubt about the methodological robustness of this adjustment, however, these cities in a strict sense do not represent the heterogeneity of the rural territories of Colombia. Although they are cities characterized by being rural or dispersed rural, according to the categories of rurality, the economic, social and cultural dynamics are quite homogeneous among themselves. The occupation is concentrated in commerce, transportation and public administration activities, where the participation of agricultural work in the best of cases reaches 10%. Similarly, these cities have a labor market structure closer to the urban one: with high unemployment rates, greater participation and less inactivity.
Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsOn the other hand, according to the 2014 National Agricultural Census, these territories represent 50% of the country’s natural forest area and 18.7% of other uses. In addition, about 330,000 hectares are allocated to crops, which barely represents 5% compared to the national total and is comparable with the area of crops in a department such as Córdoba or Caldas.
In terms of population, DANE projections based on the 2018 Census show that by 2020, the five cities had close to 190 thousand inhabitants (equivalent to 1.6% of the rural population), with a classification of 63, 5% in the capital cities and 36.5% in populated centers and dispersed rural areas, which contrasts with the national classification, which has a participation of 76 and 24% for each area respectively. The types of jobs are closer to urban services, the land is not used for agricultural activities and it is also about territories with a greater concentration of dispersed rurality and in the population aggregate it represents a ridiculous figure. The low representation of rurality behind the poverty line makes it sensitive to price changes for some products in only five cities.
Thus, the cities chosen to determine the rural monetary poverty line do not comprehensively represent the dynamics of rurality and therefore referencing the poverty line only to this selection is insufficient.
The consequences of this low representation of aggregate rurality lead to equivocal generalizations for the entire country. It is not the same to speak of dispersed populations that have little urban-rural links and in which the role of agglomerations is almost nil, to compare the rurality close to cities and intermediate territories, which is strongly influenced by price changes and the change in urban demand. Much more, if it is analyzed from an agri-food systems perspective, according to which changes in consumption patterns directly affect the conditions of producers, prices and consumption patterns.
In Colombia, rural inhabitants are 24% of the country’s inhabitants, even if the criterion of rurality categories is adopted, this percentage reaches 36%, however, the line that defines whether they are poor or not varies according to what happens in five cities that are barely equivalent to 1.6% of the first percentage. In other words, public policies for the fight against poverty may be classifying the rural poor with a different bar than reality. This, together with the fact that the Large Integrated Household Survey does not allow urban-rural disaggregation at the departmental level, is a major obstacle to the recognition of the country’s territorial heterogeneities.
We cannot continue to think that the rural area of Boyacá is the same as that of InÃrida. Having a fair criterion of measurement (and equivalent, in addition) of rural poverty should be the first step in closing the historical gaps of Colombian rurality.
* Director of the Initiative in Agrifood Systems of the Universidad de los Andes.
** Research Assistant Rimisp Colombia.
