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The World Bank has just published the “2010 Report on Human Opportunity in Latin America and the Caribbean: What Opportunity Do our Children Have?”. The report measures how personal circumstances impact a child’s probability of accessing the services that are necessary to succeed in life. The data is representative of some 200 million children living in 18 countries over the last 15 years, and compares human opportunity in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) with that of developed countries.

According to the study, these countries are still far from the levels reached in countries like Spain, France and the United States. However, the opportunities for LAC children have increased by one percentage point every year since 1995, although there is significant disparity among different countries.

The countries with the highest human opportunity levels are Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Argentina. Having said that, Chile and Uruguay still rank below countries with the lowest scores for Europe and North America.

Access the web for more information.

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The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has just published the report, “The Popular Republic of China and Latin America and the Caribbean: Towards a Strategic Relationship”. The study looks at trends in trade and investment between China and the Latin American region as China becomes one of the three major export markets, together with the European Union and the United States.

The report is available online in Spanish.

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The Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) has just published the “Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean 2009.” This annual publication is one of the leading sources of statistical information on the region and contains social, economic and environmental data.

The report is divided into four sections, which focus on:

-Demographic and social aspects, with a particular emphasis on gender.

-Economic statistics, such as prices, international trade, balance of payments and national accounts.

-The environment and natural resources.

-Methodological aspects related to the origin of the data, their definition and coverage.

According to data from the yearbook, the economy of Latin America and the Caribbean has grown by 4 percent over the last 60 years, while the region’s population has risen by an average of just over 2 percent a year.

The complete document can be downloaded in PDF format. The statistical graphs are in Excel.

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The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has just published the report “Economics of Climate Change in Latin America and the Caribbean.” The study forecasts that if no international agreement is reached to mitigate the effects of climate change, the overall cost to Latin America and the Caribbean could be equivalent to as much as 137 percent of the region’s current GDP by 2100. This will be a result of the massive losses in terms of agriculture and biodiversity, strong pressures on infrastructure and the growing intensity of natural disasters.

Although Latin America and the Caribbean is the second region in the world with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions after Africa, it is nevertheless suffering the effects of global warming more than any other.

The full-text is available on the web.

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The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has just published the Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean 2008. It’s one of the leading sources of statistical information on the region, and contains social, economic and environmental data from the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It comprises four chapters: demographic and social indicators; basic economic, trade and balance of payments statistics as well as national accounts; information on the environment and natural resources; and methodological aspects and other data on sources. The digital version is available through the ECLAC website and includes more statistical data than the print version.