The Poverty in Latin America database has been developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Social Development Division in the framework of the project "Monitoring the poverty target of the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG)", financed by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECI).

The main goal of this database is to support the follow-up to MDG 1, "eradicate extreme poverty and hunger", and its target of reducing by half, between 1990 and 2015, the percentage of people who live in extreme poverty. In particular, this database seeks to provide a more adequate characterization of poverty and extreme poverty in the region by disaggregating indicators according to different dimensions: sex, geographical area, age, educational level, family type, ethnicity, and employment.