Thanks to a favourable economic environment, improvements in the labour market and the effect of prioritizing social policy on combating poverty and inequality, between 2002 and 2012 poverty fell by 15.7 percentage points to a level of 28.1% (ECLAC, 2015). During the same period, most countries in the region also managed to reduce income inequality. Nonetheless, since 2012 poverty and inequality levels have both remained broadly constant (ECLAC, 2016b). There are also clear inequalities between broad segments of the population, which are accentuated in rural areas, where the most recent data reveal poverty and indigence rates that are practically double those observed in urban areas (ECLAC, 2016b).