This is what happens when price controls, socialism and hyperinflation are mixed.
According to Reuters, Venezuelans reported losing on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight last year and almost 90 percent now live in poverty.
The data comes from a study on the impact of the devastating economic crisis and food shortages.
The annual survey, published on Wednesday by three universities, is one of the most closely-followed assessments of Venezuelans’ well being.
Last year, the three universities found that Venezuelans said they had lost an average of 8 kilograms during 2016. This time, the study’s dozen investigators surveyed 6,168 Venezuelans between the ages of 20 and 65 across the country of 30 million people.
“Income is being pulverized,” Maria Ponce, one of the study’s investigators, told a news conference at the Andres Bello Catholic University on Caracas’s outskirts.
“This disparity between the rise in prices and the population’s salaries is so generalized that there is practically not a single Venezuelan who is not poor,” she said.
Prices in Venezuela rose over 4,000 percent in the 12 months to the end of January, according to various studies.
-RW
This weight loss in Venezuela brings to mind North Korea where they had famines in the 90’s and that North Koreans are shorter and weigh less than South Koreans. Interesting that South Koreans have less prevalence to obesity than North Koreans.
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