business & economy

Also in this section:
Is the Trump Ocean Tower project about to come crashing down?
Pipeline project draws legislators' communities' opposition
The flip side of prosperity
Business & Economy Briefs

The flip side of Panama's celebrated prosperity

While by everybody's calculation this country's Gross Domestic Product is growing at a faster rate than it has in several decades and according to disputed government claims unemployment is at record low levels, ever more people are found sleeping on the streets of Panama City's neighborhoods. This situation reflects two realities that contrast with country's macro-economic success. First, Panama has one of the world's most uneven distributions of wealth, to the extent that all of the theories about how rising tides lift all boats and the rich trickling their windfalls on the poor demonstrably don't work here. Second, the Ministry of Housing has a policy that excludes single men from housing assistance in the event that their home burns down or for that matter is torn down by the ministry. Housing Minister Balbina Herrera's policy of tearing down slums to make the land available for developers, coupled with her discriminatory treatment of unmarried men, is leaving ever more of the poor with no place to go. The fire that burned 137 residential buildings in the slums of Curundu earlier this year, coupled with Balbina's policies, sent dozens of men in search of pieces of cardboard and sidewalks that are sheltered from the rain in lieu of housing.

Photo by Eric Jackson