Poverty. Fields concluded that the proportion of Costa Ricans below the absolute poverty
line fell from 20% to 10% from the early sixties to the early seventies. In Brazil in this period Fields
estimated the decline as from 37% to 35.5%. In the 1990s, absolute poverty declined in both
countries (see World Development Report, 1990, 2000), but it is apparently rising again in Brazil.
In 2000, 25.4% of the population of Brazil lived on less than $2 per day, compared with about
23.3% in Costa Rica. Brazil also suffers from a very high incidence of child labor for its income
level, as a December 2001 World Bank study and reports by the International Labor Office have
underlined. As many as seven million children still work in Brazil, despite the country having
officially made the eradication of child labor a priority. The problem is not unknown in Costa Rica,
where the minimum working age is lower than that of compulsory education, an anomaly that may
be interpreted as a wink and a nod at the problem. But the scope of the problem is comparatively
modest