Abstract
All over Latin America (LA), preexisting urban inequalities and vulnerabilities have shaped the spread of COVID-19. However, the pandemic is likely to increase vulnerabilities in the long term. The objective of the chapter is to discuss the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on sustainable development, particularly on poverty and inequality, with a special focus on cities. The chapter raises issues for future public policy interventions in order to fulfill sustainable development objectives. The chapter begins with an introduction, followed by a section on the 2030 Agenda and the social indicators for LA before the pandemic. The third section discusses preliminary data on how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted LA, followed by the fourth section on the long-term social impact of the pandemic in LA regarding poverty, inequality, and the 2030 Agenda. Finally, the fifth section discusses the challenges faced by the region to reach the 2030 Agenda targets amid the new situation.
Keywords
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- 1.
A complete assessment of SDGs for each country in LA is available at https://agenda2030lac.org/estadisticas/datos-indicadores.html
- 2.
The effects of intersectionality (understood as the multiple interacting influences of social location, identity, and historical oppression) in inequalities and health are not a new phenomenon to science (Kapilashrami et al., 2015). These pose challenges for researchers as different axes of inequality cannot be analyzed in isolation from one another, but a structural approach must be pursued. To understand health inequalities, Gkiouleka et al. (2018) suggest an integrative analytical framework that accounts for the complexity of the intertwined influence of both individual social positioning and institutional stratification on health. According to the authors, intersectionality provides a strong analytical tool for an integrated understanding of health inequalities by addressing the multiple layers of privilege and disadvantage, such as race, migration/ethnicity, and gender/sexuality.
- 3.
Studies for the USA argue that high-income households have increased savings during the pandemic as expenditures for this group have dropped 17% compared to 4% for low-income households (Galiley, 2020). We are not yet aware of such studies for LA.
- 4.
Even before the pandemic, there was a growing need for public intervention to guarantee the 2030 Agenda. The pandemic increases the need for social expenditure in the future, not only in the present moment. For example, as ECLAC and OPS (2020) argue, during the pandemic, treatments for many chronic diseases were interrupted. Furthermore, some people infected by COVID-19 were left with side effects, which will have a future toll on health care systems, especially the public ones (Salehi et al., 2020).
- 5.
As of August 20th, 2020, USD 1 equals R$ 5.61.
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de Oliveira, A.L.M., Emídio, A.P. (2021). “The Great Equalizer”? The Long-Term Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Poverty, Inequality, and the 2030 Agenda in Latin America. In: Montoya, M.A., Krstikj, A., Rehner, J., Lemus-Delgado, D. (eds) COVID-19 and Cities. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84134-8_7
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