Oxfam report says that a million people fell into poverty in Spain due to the pandemic

This Monday a report was published by the Oxfam Intermón organization indicating that more than a million people have begun to suffer from serious material shortages in Spain.

The NGO, which published the international investigation “Inequalities kill”, called on the Spanish government to tackle this situation.

In the Oxfam report, it denounces that the wealth of the ten richest men on the planet has doubled, while the income of 99% of humanity has deteriorated due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In the case of Spain, it stands out that during the first year of the pandemic (2020) more than a million people found themselves in a situation of severe material deprivation, with difficulties in meeting the cost of essential supplies or eating meat twice a week. week.

“Economic inequality has skyrocketed as a result of covid 19, there has been a huge increase in the gap between the super-rich and the rest of humanity, we have never seen this before,” explains one of the report’s authors Íñigo Macías.

In Spain, a country of 47.4 million inhabitants, the Gross Domestic Product fell by 10.8% that year. And the economic and social impact of covid has increased households without income by 51,000.

“It is being especially hard for the most vulnerable groups, but also unequal, the first information detects an increase in wage inequality, causing the distance between those who earn the most and those who earn the least to widen,” warns the specialist.

Oxfam proposes to reinforce social protection policies that have proven essential during the pandemic to reduce social gaps in Spain.

In this sense, he mentions the temporary employment regulation files for workers in companies affected by the covid crisis and the minimum vital income for less wealthy families.

According to the NGO, Spain must continue to improve investment in health and education and guarantee progressive taxation.

“In Spain, when things go wrong, poverty and inequality increase a lot and when things go well it decreases very little; (…) the austerity during the previous crisis meant a continued decline in investment in public spending,” he laments the investigator.

Oxfam asks the Spanish Executive to use the recovery funds from the European Union to reduce inequalities, combat the effects of climate change and benefit the population that is most at risk of vulnerability. (I)