Download or read book What is Behind Latin America s Declining Income Inequality written by Ms.Evridiki Tsounta and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Income inequality in Latin America has declined during the last decade, in contrast to the experience in many other emerging and developed regions. However, Latin America remains the most unequal region in the world. This study documents the declining trend in income inequality in Latin America and proposes various reasons behind this important development. Using a panel econometric analysis for a large group of emerging and developing countries, we find that the Kuznets curve holds. Notwithstanding the limitations in the dataset and of cross-country regression analysis more generally, our results suggest that almost two-thirds of the recent decline in income inequality in Latin America is explained by policies and strong GDP growth, with policies alone explaining more than half of this total decline. Higher education spending is the most important driver, followed by stronger foreign direct investment and higher tax revenues. Results suggest that policies and to some extent positive growth dynamics could play an important role in lowering inequality further.

Download or read book Declining Inequality in Latin America written by Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010-08-01 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Brookings Institution Press and United Nations Development Programme publication Latin America is often singled out for its high and persistent income inequality. Toward the end of the 1990s, however, income concentration began to fall across the region. Of the seventeen countries for which comparable data are available, twelve have experienced a decline, particularly since 2000. This book is among the first efforts to understand what happened in these countries and why. Led by editors Felipe López-Calva and Nora Lustig, a panel of distinguished economists undertakes in-depth analyses of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru. In addition, they provide essential background in the form of overviews of the relationship between markets and inequality, the political economy of redistribution, and the evolution of income inequality in the advanced industrialized economies. Two factors account for much of the decline in inequality: a decrease in the wage gap between skilled and low-skilled labor, and an increase in government transfers targeted to the poor. Thanks to the timeliness and sophistication of these essays, Declining Inequality in Latin America is likely to become a standard reference in its field.

Download or read book Falling Inequality in Latin America written by Giovanni Andrea Cornia and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume documents and explains the reduction of income inequality that has taken place in the majority of Latin American countries over the last decade.

Download or read book Falling Inequality in Latin America written by Giovanni Andrea Cornia and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-01-16 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume aims to document and explain the sizeable decline of income inequality that has taken place in Latin America during the 2000s. It does so through an exploration of inequality changes in six representative countries, and ten policy chapters dealing with macroeconomics, foreign trade, taxation, labour market, human capital formation, and social assistance, which point to the emergence of a 'new policy model'. The volume addresses a major issue in economic development with profound implications for many developing regions and those OECD countries mired in a long-lasting financial crisis and economic stagnation. For at least the last quarter of the twentieth century, Latin America suffered from low growth, rising inequality, and frequent financial crises. However, since the turn of the century, growth accelerated, inequality declined, poverty fell, and macroeconomic stability improved, all this in parallel to the spread of centre-left political regimes in three quarters of the region. This inequality decline has taken many by surprise as, for a long time, the region has been a symbol of a deeply entrenched unequal distribution of assets, incomes, and opportunities, limited or no state redistribution, and a deeply embedded authoritarianism enforcing an unjust status quo. The recent Latin American experience is particularly valuable as inequality was reduced under open economy conditions and in a period of intensifying global integration, which have often been considered as a source of rising inequality. In this sense, however imperfect, the recent Latin American experience may be of interest to countries completing their transition to the market and liberal democracy (as in the former socialist countries of Europe), facing a political transition (as those affected by the Arab Spring, Myanmar and countries in sub-Saharan Africa), or recording rises in inequality and social tensions in spite of rapid economic growth (as in China and India). Until recently there was not much agreement on the drivers of the inequality decline in the region, which was attributed to changes in the supply/demand of skilled workers, improvements in terms of trade, the spread of social assistance schemes, or 'luck'. In this respect, the volume offers the first scholarly and systematic exploration of this unexpected change. As income inequality has been rising and is currently rising in many parts of the world, a good understanding of the Latin American experience over the 2000s is a topic that will inform and generate a lot of attention.

Download or read book The Decline of Latin American Economies written by Sebastian Edwards and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-02-15 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin America’s economic performance is mediocre at best, despite abundant natural resources and flourishing neighbors to the north. The perplexing question of how some of the wealthiest nations in the world in the nineteenth century are now the most crisis-prone has long puzzled economists and historians. The Decline of Latin American Economies examines the reality behind the struggling economies of Argentina, Chile, and Mexico. A distinguished panel of experts argues here that slow growth, rampant protectionism, and rising inflation plagued Latin America for years, where corrupt institutions and political unrest undermined the financial outlook of already besieged economies. Tracing Latin America’s growth and decline through two centuries, this volume illustrates how a once-prosperous continent now lags behind. Of interest to scholars and policymakers alike, it offers new insight into the relationship between political systems and economic development.

Download or read book Democracy and the Left written by Evelyne Huber and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although inequality in Latin America ranks among the worst in the world, it has notably declined over the last decade, offset by improvements in health care and education, enhanced programs for social assistance, and increases in the minimum wage. In Democracy and the Left, Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens argue that the resurgence of democracy in Latin America is key to this change. In addition to directly affecting public policy, democratic institutions enable left-leaning political parties to emerge, significantly influencing the allocation of social spending on poverty and inequality. But while democracy is an important determinant of redistributive change, it is by no means the only factor. Drawing on a wealth of data, Huber and Stephens present quantitative analyses of eighteen countries and comparative historical analyses of the five most advanced social policy regimes in Latin America, showing how international power structures have influenced the direction of their social policy. They augment these analyses by comparing them to the development of social policy in democratic Portugal and Spain. The most ambitious examination of the development of social policy in Latin America to date, Democracy and the Left shows that inequality is far from intractable—a finding with crucial policy implications worldwide.

Download or read book Commodity Cycles Inequality and Poverty in Latin America written by Mr. Ravi Balakrishnan and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-04-26 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past decades, inequality has risen not just in advanced economies but also in many emerging market and developing economies, becoming one of the key global policy challenges. And throughout the 20th century, Latin America was associated with some of the world’s highest levels of inequality. Yet something interesting happened in the first decade and a half of the 21st century. Latin America was the only region in the World to have experienced significant declines in inequality in that period. Poverty also fell in Latin America, although this was replicated in other regions, and Latin America started from a relatively low base. Starting around 2014, however, and even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, poverty and inequality gains had already slowed in Latin America and, in some cases, gone into reverse. And the COVID-19 shock, which is still playing out, is likely to dramatically worsen short-term poverty and inequality dynamics. Against this background, this departmental paper investigates the link between commodity prices, and poverty and inequality developments in Latin America.

Download or read book Fiscal Redistribution and Income Inequality in Latin America written by Edwin Goni and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2008 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Income inequality in Latin America ranks among the highest in the world. It can be traced back to the unequal distribution of assets (especially land and education) in the region. But the extent to which asset inequality translates into income inequality depends on the redistributive capacity of the state. This paper documents the performance of Latin American fiscal systems from the perspective of income redistribution using newly-available information on the incidence of taxes and transfers across the region. The findings indicate that: (i) the differences in income inequality before taxes and transfers between Latin America and Western Europe are much more modest than those after taxes and transfers; (ii) the key reason is that, in contrast with industrial countries, in most Latin American countries the fiscal system is of little help in reducing income inequality; and (iii) in countries where fiscal redistribution is significant, it is achieved mostly through transfers rather than taxes. These facts stress the need for fiscal reforms across the region to further the goal of social equity. However, different countries need to place different relative emphasis on raising tax collection, restructuring the tax system, and improving the targeting of expenditures.

Download or read book Wage Inequality in Latin America written by Julián Messina and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2017-12-28 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What caused the decline in wage inequality of the 2000s in Latin America? Looking to the future, will the current economic slowdown be regressive? Wage Inequality in Latin America: Understanding the Past to Prepare for the Future addresses these two questions by reviewing relevant literature and providing new evidence on what we know from the conceptual, empirical, and policy perspectives. The answer to the fi rst question can be broken down into several parts, although the bottom line is that the changes in wage inequality resulted from a combination of three forces: (a) education expansion and its eff ect on falling returns to skill (the supply-side story); (b) shifts in aggregate domestic demand; and (c) exchange rate appreciation from the commodity boom and the associated shift to the nontradable sector that changed interfi rm wage diff erences. Other forces had a non-negligible but secondary role in some countries, while they were not present in others. These include the rapid increase of the minimum wage and a rapid trend toward formalization of employment, which played a supporting role but only during the boom. Understanding the forces behind recent trends also helps to shed light on the second question. The analysis in this volume suggests that the economic slowdown is putting the brakes on the reduction of inequality in Latin America and will likely continue to do so—but it might not actually reverse the region’s movement toward less wage inequality.

Download or read book Deconstructing the Decline in Inequality in Latin America written by Nora Lustig and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inequality in Latin America unambiguously declined in the 2000s. The Gini coefficient fell in 16 of the 17 countries where there are comparable data, and the change was statistically significant for all of them. Existing studies point to two main explanations for the decline in inequality: a reduction in hourly labor income inequality, and more robust and progressive government transfers. Available evidence suggests that it is the skill premium -- or, more precisely, the returns to primary, secondary, and tertiary education vs. no schooling or incomplete primary schooling -- that drives the decline in hourly labor income inequality. The causes behind the decline in returns to schooling, however, have not been unambiguously established. Some studies find that returns fell because of an increase in the supply of workers with more educational attainment; others, because of a shift in demand away from skilled labor.

Download or read book Has Latin American Inequality Changed Direction written by Luis Bértola and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-01-25 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book brings together a range of ideas and theories to arrive at a deeper understanding of inequality in Latin America and its complex realities. To so, it addresses questions such as: What are the origins of inequality in Latin America? How can we create societies that are more equal in terms of income distribution, gender equality and opportunities? How can we remedy the social divide that is making Latin America one of the most unequal regions on earth? What are the roles played by market forces, institutions and ideology in terms of inequality? In this book, a group of global experts gathered by the Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean (INTAL), part of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), show readers how various types of inequality, such as economical, educational, racial and gender inequality have been practiced in countries like Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico and many others through the centuries. Presenting new ideas, new evidence, and new methods, the book subsequently analyzes how to move forward with second-generation reforms that lay the foundations for more egalitarian societies. As such, it offers a valuable and insightful guide for development economists, historians and Latin American specialists alike, as well as students, educators, policymakers and all citizens with an interest in development, inequality and the Latin American region.

Download or read book Has Latin America Always Been Unequal written by Ewout Frankema and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The forces of industrialisation, urbanisation, globalisation and technological change have washed away the pre-modern outlook of most Latin American economies. Despite the improved opportunities of social mobility offered by economic modernisation, current income inequality levels (still) appear extraordinary high. Has Latin America always been unequal? Did the region fail to settle a longstanding account with its colonial past? Or should we be reluctant to point our finger so far back in time? In a comparative study of asset and income distribution Frankema shows that both the levels, and nature, of income inequality have changed significantly since 1870. Besides the deep historical roots of land and educational inequality, more recent demographic and political-institutional forces are taken on board to understand Latin America’s distributive dynamics in the long twentieth century.

Download or read book Coping with Austerity written by Nora Claudia Lustig and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concern about the pervasiveness of poverty and income inequality in Latin America goes beyond the issue of social justice. The persistence of mass poverty and inequality pits different social groups against one another and leads to a polarization that makes consistent economic policy formation difficult. National productivity may also suffer in economies with poorly educated workforces lacking adequate health care. Statistics on poverty and inequality in Latin America are rudimentary and often conflicting. Yet it is known that poverty became more widespread in the region during the last decade as it experienced economic decline. About 180 million people, or two out of every five in the area, are now living in poverty—some 50 million more than in 1980. It is also known that income and wealth are far more unequally distributed in Latin America than in most other developing regions. This book provides a much-needed assessment of how poverty, inequality, and social indicators have fared in several Latin American countries over the past decade. Experts from Latin America and the U.S. focus attention on the extent of poverty and inequality and how they have been affected by the debt crisis and adjustment of the 1980s. They explain that issues of poverty and inequality were neglected as governments in Latin America struggled to restore stability and growth to their economies. Social sector spending declined sharply, affecting both the quality and quantity of services provided. The contributors examine how poverty and inequality are—or are not—being addressed in each country. They also explore the viability of alternative approaches to combating poverty and reducing inequality. They explain that virtually no one denies that governments must take a leading role in the provision of health, education, and other social services. Yet there are sharp debates--over the compatibility of social spending with economic adjustment and stabilization; the priority of social expenditures in relation to other governmental spending; the allocation of funds among different social programs; who should, and should not, benefit; and who should pay the costs. They show that the poor and middle sectors had to pay dearly because their governments, the international community, and the families themselves were not prepared to deal with austerity. The book contains eleven chapters by contributors from universities and research institutions in the U.S. and Latin America, as well as from international financial organizations. It is the result of a project cosponsored by Inter-American Dialogue.

Download or read book A Moment of Equality for Latin America written by Barbara Fritz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike other regions around the world, several Latin American countries have managed to reduce income inequality over the last decade. Higher growth rates and growing employment, but also innovative wage policies and social programs, have contributed to reducing poverty and narrow income disparities. Yet, despite this progress, nation-states in the region demonstrate little capacity to substantially change their patterns of deeply rooted inequalities. Focusing on the limits and challenges of redistributive policies in Latin America, this volume synthesizes and updates the discussion of inequality in the region, introducing the perspective of global and transnational interdependencies. The book explores the extent to which redistributive policies have been interlinked with the provision and quality of public goods as well as with structural changes of the productive sector. Inspired by structuralist and neostructuralist thinking of Latin American economists, such as Raúl Prebisch and Celso Furtado, authors question the redistributive impact of the interplay of recent macroeconomic, fiscal and social policies, particularly under left and center-left administrations committed to greater equality. Bringing together experts in social, fiscal and macroeconomic policies to investigate the interdependent and global character of inequalities, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, economics, development and politics with interests in Latin America, inequality and public policy.

Download or read book Inequality in Latin America written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2004 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Deconstructing the Decline in Inequality in Latin America written by Nora Lustig and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inequality in Latin America unambiguously declined in the 2000s. The Gini coefficient fell in 16 of the 17 countries where there are comparable data, and the change was statistically significant for all of them. Existing studies point to two main explanations for the decline in inequality: a reduction in hourly labor income inequality, and more robust and progressive government transfers. Available evidence suggests that it is the skill premium-or, more precisely, the returns to primary, secondary, and tertiary education vs. no schooling or incomplete primary schooling-that drives the decline in hourly labor income inequality. The causes behind the decline in returns to schooling, however, have not been unambiguously established. Some studies find that returns fell because of an increase in the supply of workers with more educational attainment; others, because of a shift in demand away from skilled labor.

Download or read book Inequality in Latin America written by David M. De Ferranti and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin America and the Caribbean has been one of the regions of the world with the greatest inequality. This book explores why the region suffers from such persistent inequality, identifies how it hampers development, and suggests ways to achieve greater equity in the distribution of wealth, incomes and opportunities. The study draws on data from 20 countries based on household surveys covering 3.6 million people, and reviews extensive economic, sociological and political science studies on inequality in Latin America. Four broad areas for action by governments and civil society groups to break the destructive pattern are outlined: (1) build more open political and social institutions, that allow the poor and historically subordinate groups to gain a greater share of agency, voice and power in society; (2) ensure that economic institutions and policies seek greater equity, through sound macroeconomic management and equitable, efficient crisis resolution institutions, that avoid the large regressive redistributions that occur during crises, and that allow for saving in good times to enhance access by the poor to social safety nets in bad times; (3) increase access by the poor to high-quality public services, especially education, health, water and electricity, as well as access to farmland and the rural services, and protect and enforce the property rights of the urban poor; (4) reform income transfer programmes so that they reach the poorest families.