Social Issues

By Steve Hanke In my misery index, I calculate a ranking for all countries where suitable data from the Economist Intelligence Unit exist. My misery index — a simple sum of inflation, lending rates, and unemployment rates, minus year-on-year per capita GDP growth — is used to construct a ranking for 89 countries. The table...

The Ecuador National Police’s second attempt to talk to leaders of the Sarayaku community about three fugitives went much more smoothly than the first attempt three weeks earlier. Two police helicopters landed Friday at Sarayaku in Pastaza Province without incident. In the first visit to the Amazonian village, the helicopters were surrounded by Sarayaku men,...

President Rafael Correa says that national police and military personnel will make a second attempt to capture a fugitive national assemblyman and two associates believed to be harbored by the Sarayaku community, an indigenous tribe in Ecuador’s Amazon region. Two weeks ago, a government helicopeter was forced to leave the area when it was surrounded...

Supporters of a national referendum on oil drilling in the Yasuní national park are calling a preliminary government rejection of almost 500,000 out of 757,000 voter signatures an “assault on democracy.” The official announcement from the National Electoral Council (CNE) is expected today. In a Tuesday news conference, the president of CNE said that only...

Indigenous people, environment groups and others hoping to force a national referendum on whether one of the world’s most biodiverse regions should be exploited by oil companies fear that the Ecuadorean government is manipulating the results of a petition in order to support the president. Ecuador’s proposal to leave an 846m barrels of oil in...

By José Jasán Nieves Cárdenas “The objective is getting there to go beyond,” confess Mario and Ismaray, a couple of young Cubans who plan to travel to Ecuador on the first leg of a journey to the United States. “We have investigated various means, with various prices according to the risk, the length of the...

In a new crime survey Ecuador ranks as one of the safest countries in Latin America. The 2014 Latin American Security Index ranks Ecuador only behind Costa Rica, Uruguay, Chile and Panama for serious crimes. The most dangerous countries in Latin America, according to the survey, conducted annual by FTE Consulting of Florida, are Venezuela,...

Banco del Instituto Ecuatoriano de Seguridad Social (BEISS) Says it is processing more mortgage applications and taking less time to do it. The home lending wing of Ecuador’s Social Security system says it has processed 7,449 mortage applications, amounting to more than $286 million since early December and has reduced the time required to handle...

After announcing two weeks ago that all independent professionals must join Ecuador’s Social Security system, the agency has decided that it does not have the authority to make membership mandatory. The first order by the Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security (IESS) claimed that business owners and professionals who are not currently part of the Social...

Venezuela ranks first in the number of car accident fatalities among Latin American countries while Ecuador ranks sixth, according to a new study by the University of Michigan. The study shows that Venezuela has 35 fatalities from road crashes per 100,000 population, followed by the Dominican Republic (32), El Salvador (29), Brazil (22), Paraguay (20),...