ID-03-2010
"Down and Out or Up and In? In Search of Latin America’s Elusive Middle Class"
Guillermo Cruces, Luis Felipe López-Calva and Diego Battiston
This paper discusses the existing empirical implementations of the concept of middle class in the applied literature, and derives a definition based on sound principles from distributional analysis.
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ID-02-2010
"Bigger… but Stronger? The Middle Class in Chile and Mexico in the Last Decade"
Dagmar Hertova, Luis Felipe López-Calva and Eduardo Ortiz Juárez
The analysis of the middle class emerges as a relevant issue given the strong influence that this social group has on societies and also on the economic performance. The aim of this document is to empirically contrast different ways of measuring the middle class, from purely statistical approaches to context-relative and absolute-standard measures, and to vulnerability analysis.
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ID-01-2010
"Banca Doméstica y Banca Extranjera en América Latina: ¿Roles Diferentes en la Estabilidad Financiera y el Crecimiento Económico?"
Liliana Rojas-Suarez
Una de las características que distingue a América Latina del resto del mundo en vías de desarrollo es el alto grado de apertura financiera que ha alcanzado en las últimas dos décadas y que se ha caracterizado por la drástica reducción (o eliminación, en algunos países) de restricciones a los flujos internacionales de capital.
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ID-16-2009
"The Dynamics of Inequality in the Best and Worst of Times, Bolivia 1997-2007"
George Gray Molina and Ernesto Yañez
This paper focuses on the dynamics of inequality in Bolivia between 1997 and 2007. During this period, moderate poverty declined by 3 percentage points (from 63% to 60%) and extreme poverty declined half a percentage point (from 38% to 37%). Despite the modest improvement, the absolute number of the poor increased by 970,000, at an average rate of about 100,000 new poor every year.
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ID-15-2009
"Cambios en la desigualdad del ingreso en América Latina. Contribución de sus principales determinantes. (1995-2006)"
CEDLAS
En general, las economías de América Latina se han caracterizado por presentar altos niveles de desigualdad del ingreso respecto a otros países. No obstante, si bien tanto los niveles como las trayectorias de la desigualdad entre los países latinoamericanos han sido dispares, desde principios de 2000 han asistido a un proceso de reducción de la desigualdad.
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ID-14-2009
"Markets, the State and the Dynamics of Inequality: Brazil´s Case Study"
Ricardo Barros, Mirela de Carvalho, Samuel Franco and Rosane Mendonça
In this study we seek to estimate the contribution of key aspects of Brazilian public policy and labor market performance in reducing income inequality. We focus on four main aspects: 1) government transfers, 2) earnings differentials per educational level, 3) spatial and sector labor market integration, and 4) minimum wage.
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ID-13-2009
"Growth and Equity in the Dominican Republic: The Role of the Market and the State in an Economy with Unequal Growing Prosperity"
Omar S. Arias and Rolando M. Guzmán
The Dominican Republic has experienced one of the strongest growth performances of the last two decades in the LAC region. However, poverty and inequality have not declined, and the growing prosperity has been shared unevenly among the population. Income inequality remained unchanged over the last 7 years at the average for the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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ID-12-2009
"Inequality in Post-Structural Reform Peru: The Role of Market and Policy Forces"
Miguel Jaramillo and Jaime Saavedra
In this paper, we analyze trends in inequality and characterized them, focusing on the post-structural reform period (1997-2006). Next, we identify the immediate factors influencing these trends, and link them to underlying forces associated with the market, and state policies.
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ID-11-2009
"The Dynamics of Inequality in Spain"
José Fernández-Albertos
The paper has two main objectives. The first is to provide a comprehensive picture of the evolution of inequality during the economic expansion of Spain in the second half of the 20th century. The second is to study the determinants of the evolution of inequality over time.
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ID-10-2009
"Markets and the Dynamics of Inequality: Theoretical Perspectives"
Jaime Kahhat
In its 2006 World Development Report the World Bank argues that there are two broad sets of reasons to believe that inequality can be detrimental to long-run growth and development.
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ID-09-2009
"The Political Economy of Redistributive Policies"
James A. Robinson
Many factors influence the distribution of assets and income that a market economy will generate. These include the distribution of innate abilities, the nature of technology, and the types of market imperfections which determine investment opportunities and the distribution of human and physical capital.
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ID-08-2009
"Dynamics of Inequality in Guatemala"
Lucilla Bruni, Alberto Fuentes and Tomás Rosada
Between 2000 and 2006, Guatemala achieved some, though modest, improvement in terms of inequality and poverty. We find evidence that those improvements did not benefit the poorest; rather, they benefited individuals in the middle ange of the distribution.
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ID-07-2009
"Redistributive Constraints under High Inequality: The Case of Mexico"
John Scott
The paper presents a comprehensive analysis and interpretation of redistributive spending in Mexico. It reviews the evolution over the last two decades of the principal redistributive instruments and the distributive outcomes targeted by these instruments (income, land, education, health, nutrition).
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ID-06-2009
"A Distribution in Motion: The Case of Argentina: A Review of the Empirical Evidence"
Leonardo Gasparini and Guillermo Cruces
This paper documents the changes in the income distribution in Argentina from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s. Over the period inequality increased substantially. Two types of episodes have shaped this upward trend: deep macroeconomic crises and periods of sudden and intense economic liberalization.
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ID-05-2009
"The Dynamics of Income Concentration over the Twentieth Century: The Case of Advanced Economies"
Facundo Alvaredo and Thomas Piketty
This paper offers an overview of the main findings of a collective research project on income distribution in the long run in advanced countries. The decline in income concentration that took place during the first half of the twentieth century was mostly accidental, and does not seem to have much connection with a Kuznets-type process.
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ID-04-2009
"The Educational Transition and Decreasing Wage Inequality in Chile"
Juan Eberhard and Eduardo Engel
The wage of the 90th (richest) percentile of the wage distribution in Chile increased faster than the median wage and the wage of the 10th percentile between 1975 and 1990. By contrast, from 1990 onwards the wage of the 10th percentile and the median wage grew faster than the 90th percentile.
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ID-03-2009
Market Forces, State Action and Social Institutions in the Dynamics of Gender (In)Equality in Latin America"
Vivianne Ventura-Dias.
In the past two decades, Latin American women are facing greater social opportunities in accessing the “constituents of development” (education, health, and earning opportunities, legal and civil rights and political participation) than any time before. Tangible improvements in women„s lives can be measured by reductions in fertility and in mortality rates, longer life expectancy, incentives for girls to attend primary and secondary schools, together with greater participation and representation in political life.
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ID-02-2009
"The Dynamics of Income Inequality in Mexico since NAFTA"
Gerardo Esquivel
This paper reviews the pattern of income inequality in Mexico since 1994. It shows that in the past few years there has been an important reduction of income inequality in Mexico, which has almost reverted the sharp increase in inequality observed between 1984 and 1994.
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ID-01-2009
"La desigualdad y el reto del desarrollo de largo plazo en América Latina y el Caribe"
Rebeca Grynspan
Latinoamérica es la región más desigual del mundo. A pesar de enormes logros sociales observados en el siglo XX y en los primeros años del siglo XXI, los indicadores de desigualdad muestran que en esta región todavía el futuro de una persona depende crucialmente de condiciones como el lugar en el que nació, el grupo étnico, racial o sexo al que pertenece o las condiciones socioeconómicas de sus padres.
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