Multi-Dimensional Review of Panama
Volume 1: Initial Assessment
Since the beginning of the 21st century, Panama has exhibited remarkable economic growth and has reduced the gap in terms of income per capita with high-income countries. Social progress has also been achieved, mainly through the reduction of poverty and advances in some well-being dimensions. However, challenges remain with regard to overcoming the so-called middle-income trap and consolidating the middle-class. This first volume of the Multi-dimensional Country Review of Panama identifies the main barriers to further inclusive development. It highlights that promoting equitable, inclusive and sustainable economic growth and improving the well-being of all citizens should be at the core of Panama’s development strategies.
Overview: Towards further sustainable development and inclusiveness in Panama
OECD Development Centre
Since the beginning of the 21st century, Panama has exhibited remarkable economic growth and has reduced the gap in terms of income per capita with high income countries. While this growth has enabled poverty reduction and advances in some well-being dimensions, prosperity has not always translated into social benefits for the whole population. Today Panama faces the challenges of adopting a new development model to overcome the middle income trap, and ensure prosperity is to the benefit of all. This overview chapter highlights the main assessments of this Multi-dimensional Country Review to promote further inclusive development through improvements in productivity, social cohesion, resource mobilisation and governance. The chapter presents a brief historical overview of Panama’s development. The chapter then describes the methodology employed in this review, and summarises the main results of the OECD well-being analysis, which presents a comprehensive picture of people’s material living conditions and quality of life. This chapter concludes with a summary of the main bottlenecks to inclusive development, and describes how these were selected for further analysis in the following chapters.