El Salvador faces a great opportunity to accelerate poverty reduction. Although poverty rates have dropped significantly over the past two decades, extreme poverty remains a challenge: by 2023, around 600,000 Salvadorans, approximately 9.3% of the country's population, remained in this difficult situation .

The important advances made in reducing violence levels and certain improvements in macroeconomic prospects—which have enabled El Salvador to become a high-middle-income country, according to the World Bank classification—offer a great opportunity to move faster in freeing more people from poverty, particularly those experiencing extreme poverty. However, achieving this goal will mainly require inclusive growth, improvements in the labor market, and household income. 

Globally, effectively combating poverty necessarily involves improving the quality of employment. This is especially true in countries like El Salvador, which faces issues related to low productivity, the sectoral composition of production, and disincentives for formal work . Because of these challenges, Salvadoran labor markets are characterized by informality, precariousness, and a high female inactivity rate.

Additionally, when addressing poverty in El Salvador, it is essential to consider the role of solidarity support networks. One in four Salvadorans lives in households that receive remittances from abroad, and one in five lives in households that receive domestic transfers . The contribution of these networks in creating and maintaining a level of well-being for households cannot be overlooked. In fact, if these transfers were abruptly interrupted, extreme poverty would double.