information for practice

Social outcomes and access to basic services in Ecuador have improved slowly but continuously since 1990, while monetary poverty has increased. The illiteracy rate fell from 11.7 to 10.8 percent, and the number of years of education of the average adult increased from 6.7 to 7.6 between 1990 and 1999. Similarly, the infant mortality rate and the population mortality rate dropped from 30 to 18 per thousand births, and from 5.0 to 4.5 per thousand respectively, during the same period. In contrast, as this report shows, poverty rates have increased from 40 to 45 percent between 1990 and 2001.