These terrible figures threaten one of the Millennium Development Goals proposed by the United Nations, that is, to a poverty level to 50% of which was booked in 1990. In the case of Latin America, the World Bank reported in March that would 6,000,000 people rising to the extreme poverty in 2009, which means it would take no less than two years of stable economic growth to recover from this situation, which is unlikely given the current economic landscape level regional and global levels. The effects of the crisis slowed and even set back the progress that had been made in recent years in Latin America in terms of employment and improving the quality of life of the inhabitants, as a result of sustained growth of hemispheric economies and better social policies .

It is noted that currently live in Latin America about 70 million people in extreme poverty, which represents about 13% of the total population of the region. Among the factors contributing to this figure, and none of them of course is benefited by the crisis include increased malnutrition, school dropouts and increasing in many areas lack basic health care, and public trial. The global crisis got only intensify these problems and stop the advance, although slowly, towards Latin America was making life better definitely. Currently a study conducted by ECLAC indicates that the international crisis, which hit with force to most Latin American countries, with regional GDP dropping 1.9% in 2009, driven into poverty this year to other nine million Latin Americans, according to report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).