Mark WeisbrotThe Guardian Unlimited, 9 de noviembre, 2011En Inglés

Dean Baker
Truthout, November 14, 2011

Héctor Cordero-Guzmán has conducted a second round of his #OWS survey on occupywallst.org, following up on his Oct. 5 study, which I discussed in an earlier post. Cordero-Guzmán fielded the second survey on the #OWS website Oct. 20-21, right after the movement’s one-month anniversary. How has the #OWS support base changed since the beginning of October? Let’s go to the numbers.

From round one to round two, #OWS supporters are older (see graph below). In round two, 32 percent of survey respondents are 45 or older, up from 12.6 percent in round one. While almost half of supporters (49.5%) are still in the 18-34 age group, Mike Konczal argues that the movement should not be dismissed because of its young support base. He points out a large proportion of young people are involved in the #OWS movement because they have the most to lose in the current economy.

Last Sunday, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was re-elected by a large margin. His party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), won an unprecedented majority in the National Assembly.  The major media, which are generally hostile to Ortega (and to most of the left governments in Latin America), mostly missed the main economic changes that might explain this result.  These include a significant reduction in poverty and inequality and a considerable increase in access to health care and education.

Given that the world economic downturn occurred right as Ortega’s government social and economic programs were taking effect, it is surprising that poverty decreased at the rate that it did during this period. The latest household survey, published in 2009 by the Nicaraguan National Institute of Information and Development (INIDE), showed that while poverty decreased by only 9 percent between 1993 and 2002 (an average annual improvement of 1% per year), this rate of improvement tripled after 2005, decreasing by 12 percent in the four-year period between 2005 and 2009 (an average annual improvement of about 3% per year).

There was an even more pronounced change in the levels of extreme poverty, which had declined at a slow pace between 1993 and 2002 and had risen alarmingly between 2002 and 2005. In the four years after 2005, extreme poverty witnessed an average annual decline of 4.0 percent, compared with a 4.4 average annual rate increase between 2002 and 2005.