The Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean of ECLAC presents a set of basic statistics on the economic, sociodemographic and environmental situation of the region during a specific time period. This edition of the Yearbook includes information available up to mid-December 2014, and it comprises four chapters. The first covers demographic and social indicators and continues to reflect special efforts to mainstream the gender perspective in statistical information and to encompass poverty-related topics. The second chapter presents economic statistics relating to trade, balance of payments and domestic prices, as well as national accounts. The statistical series are expressed in constant dollars. The third chapter provides quantitative information available on the environment. Given the abundance of data —often diverse and sometimes conflicting— now accessible to researchers, special attention must be paid to technical aspects specifying the source of the data, their definition and coverage. This information is presented in the fourth chapter, which deals with methodology and metadata, supplementing the more specific information contained in the footnotes to each of the tables in this Yearbook.
