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.

From the United States to the United Kingdom and from China to India, growing inequality has led to social discontent and the emergence of populist parties, also contributing to economic crises. We urgently need a better understanding of the roots and costs of these income gaps. The Costs of Inequality draws on the experience of Latin America, one of the most unequal regions of the world, to demonstrate how inequality has hampered economic growth, contributed to a lack of good jobs, weakened democracy, and led to social divisions and mistrust. In turn, low growth, exclusionary politics, violence and social mistrust have reinforced inequality, generating various vicious circles. Latin America thus provides a disturbing image of what the future may hold in other countries if we do not act quickly. It also provides some useful lessons on how to fight income concentration and build more equitable societies.

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.

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.

Equality of opportunity is about leveling the playing field so that circumstances such as gender, ethnicity, place of birth, or family background do not influence a person s life chances. Success in life should depend on people s choices, effort and talents, not to their circumstances at birth. 'Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean' introduces new methods for measuring inequality of opportunities and makes an assessment of its evolution in Latin America over a decade. An innovative Human Opportunity Index and other parametric and non-parametric techniques are presented for quantifying inequality based on circumstances exogenous to individual efforts. These methods are applied to gauge inequality of opportunities in access to basic services for children, learning achievement for youth, and income and consumption for adults.

Monograph presenting a macroeconomic analysis of the relationship of economic development to wealth and income distribution inequality trends in the USA from the historical 1770s to the 1970s - rejects the notion that inequality was a necessary precondition of economic growth, and argues that complex interactions among such variables as technological change, labour supply and capital formation were sources of economic disparity. Bibliography pp. 335 to 349 and graphs.

Since the earliest years of European colonialism, Latin America has been a region of seemingly intractable inequalities, marked by a stark divide between the haves and the have-nots. This collection illuminates the diverse processes that have combined to produce and reproduce inequalities in Latin America, as well as some of the implications of those processes for North Americans. Anthropologists, cultural critics, historians, and political scientists from North and South America offer new and varied perspectives, building on the sociologist Charles Tilly’s relational framework for understanding enduring inequalities. While one essay is a broad yet nuanced analysis of Latin American inequality and its persistence, another is a fine-grained ethnographic view of everyday life and aspirations among shantytown residents living on the outskirts of Lima. Other essays address topics such as the initial bifurcation of Peru’s healthcare system into one for urban workers and another for the rural poor, the asymmetrical distribution of political information in Brazil, and an evolving Cuban “aesthetics of inequality,” which incorporates hip-hop and other transnational cultural currents. Exploring the dilemmas of Latin American inequalities as they are playing out in the United States, a contributor looks at new immigrant Mexican farmworkers in upstate New York to show how undocumented workers become a vulnerable rural underclass. Taken together, the essays extend social inequality critiques in important new directions. Contributors Jeanine Anderson Javier Auyero Odette Casamayor Christina Ewig Paul Gootenberg Margaret Gray Eric Hershberg Lucio Renno Luis Reygadas

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.

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, 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.