Latin America’s Crime Tax by Guillermo Ortiz
Even excluding lives lost, communities displaced, and families ravaged, the economic costs of organized crime in the region produce a bleak picture, shaving 0.5–2 percentage points off annual GDP growth in the most affected countries. That, too, represents a hefty human toll.
MEXICO CITY—Latin America almost certainly pays the world’s highest economic price for organized crime. According to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), crime costs Latin America and the Caribbean an average of 3.44% of GDP annually, equivalent to 78% of all public education spending across the region. But there are significant discrepancies across LAC. Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico stand out both for the scale of the problem and how organized crime operates.
