Is Poverty the Best Allied of COVID-19 in Developing Countries? The Case of Guatemala

Abstract

This paper tries to expose how poverty can be a crucial issue in the faster expansion of COVID-19 in developing countries like Guatemala. This research paper's primary objective is to prove that the rapid development of COVID-19 infected cases is directly involved in the massive poverty levels in developing countries. However, this paper also looks at the dramatic reduction of the middle class and the expansion of poverty. This research focuses on how developing, and least developed countries are extremely vulnerable to COVID-19. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), how developing countries such as Guatemala got exponential COVID-19 contagious cases growth rates of 300% daily. According to our preliminary results in the case of Guatemala, we can observe that poverty originated from enormous inflation, massive unemployment, deep-rooted discrimination-by race and economic-, income inequality-the largest in Latin America-, a large informal economy-urban and rural-, and a vast corruption-myopic governments with personal agendas-. Finally, this paper tries to present policies (Ruiz Estrada, 2011) and (Ruiz Estrada and Park, 2018) to the Guatemalan government, the private sector, and civil society from a holistic approach to Guatemala conditions and characteristics.

Keywords: COVID-19, Econographicology, Guatemala, Poverty, Developing Countries

JEL Classification: B41