Boise University

This little preamble allows to quickly begin to admit that a society whose main power needs, rest, health and education are not satisfied, will strongly suffer the consequences in their own behavior, and may also impact on the form of Government and social coexistence. Moreover, in a regime where, at least since the primary and immaculate concept of democracy, all of its members should be free and equal. As mentioned Candido Grzybowski, in his text democracy, civil society and politics in Latin America: notes for discussion (1), referring to the portion of poor populations immersed in a democracy: like all social subjects, these groups need to become democratic in the same process by which become subjects. To situate this analysis in a network containing hypothetical sketches to raise, is they embody the following statistical data about the factor poverty, quantifying an alarming reality that will allow to be anchor for the understanding of the binomial pobreza-desigualdad and its link with democratic stability: there is around 1. 2 billion people living with income less than one dollar per day in the world. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of people living below the threshold of poverty.

In the former Soviet bloc, the poverty line rose from 1. 1 million in 1987 to 24 million estimated in 1998. In 2003, Latin America had already 225 million people whose incomes were below the poverty line. In fifteen countries in South America, more than 25% of citizens live below the poverty line, and in seven countries the proportion of poor exceeds 50% of the population. More than half of Latin American countries did not reach even the growth required to reduce the level of extreme poverty. Poverty and democracy the attempt by elucidate the degree of association between these two concepts has been the subject of exploration of various professionals. Michael Lewis-Beck, University of Michigan Distinguished Professor, and Ross Burkhart, departmental Director of the Boise University status, have arrived at interesting conclusions thereon.