Post-Chávez Venezuela, what has changed?

Since Hugo Chávez arrived to the presidency of Venezuela in 1999, lots of things have changed in the country

Lots of media have been talking about Hugo Chávez this week. After the President’s of Venezuela death, a great division between supporters and detractors of Chávez policies arose. Has he been a good President? Or has he been a very bad leader?

Hugo Chávez has been very controversial worldwide.

When we have this kind of controversy, the best thing we can do is look at the data. What do data say?

Great decrease of poverty

Maybe the most important number about Chávez era is the great decrease of poverty. Since 2003 (after the constitutional change), poverty threshold has been reduced to half. In 2003, 62% of Venezuelans lived on the edge of poverty, but in 2012 this number reduced to 32%, according to World Bank Data. Moreover, Venezuela also fought against inequality, and it has nowadays the lowest income inequality rate in South America.

Strong GDP increase

In macroeconomics, Venezuela seemed to have had a good health during Chávez governments. Its GDP has increased by more than 270% in these 14 years. It caused a big increase in GDP per capita, which now is around 12,430$/year (in Spain it’s around 32,000$). Another positive data is that jobless decreased from 17% to 8%.

However, the Bolivarian Republic has bad data too. In the one hand, foreign debt has increased in 78%. On the other hand, inflation is one of the highest in the world.

Healthcare and education investment

Venezuela’s good economic health has been the main impulse to health care and education in the country. The Venezuelan Government has multiplied by 2.5 its investment in health care. In 2003, were invested 189$/person during a year; in 2012, this amount is 663$/person, according to Instituto Nacional de Estadística. It helped to reduce child mortality (-25%).

As health care, education has been also very important in the Chávez era. Nowadays more than 70% of Venezuelan children go to pre-school education, primary and high school. When they arrived in power, they were less than 50% of Venezuelan kids.

The dark face: violence and housing

But not everything seems positive. Without talking about his control of the media or his way of doing the politics, there are very bad data too. Criminality has increased during Chávez governments in almost 50%. In 2012, there were 49 people assassinated per 100,000 people. In 2000, there were 32.

Housing has been another problem. Nowadays there are more than 400,000 Venezuelans living in bad condition houses, it supposes an increase of 82% since 2000. 

Tweet