Peru

Peru: strong, sustained growth, 1980–2025

Hyperinflation and armed insurgency in the late 1980s gave way to market-oriented reforms in the 1990s and a 2000s commodity (mainly copper) export boom that made Peru one of Latin America's fastest-growing economies for over a decade. Between 1980 and 2025, Peru's GDP per capita grew from $1,045 to $9,684 (current US$), a compound annual growth rate of 5.1% — strong, sustained growth. Annual GDP growth averaged 3.1% with a year-to-year standard deviation of 5.5 points, reflecting considerable volatility and periodic crises. Structurally, agriculture's share of the economy moved from 7.9% to 7.5% of GDP (a classic decline as the economy industrialized/modernized), while services rose from 58.4% to 50.9% of GDP, a comparatively unusual pattern for this period. On human development, life expectancy rose from 60.0 to 77.9 years, while tertiary school enrollment moved from 17.9% to 71.2%, while the urban population share grew from 64.7% to 85.6%.

What this growth cost: Growth was not without cost: per-capita CO2 emissions rose from 1.30 to 2.02 tonnes CO2e per person; income inequality (Gini index) narrowed from 45.6 to 40.1; the poverty headcount ratio fell from 6.2% to 5.1%.