IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/idb/wpaper/4271.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The 1990s in Latin America: Another Decade of Persistent Inequality, but with Somewhat Lower Poverty

Author

Listed:
  • Miguel Székely

Abstract

This paper processes 76 household surveys from 17 Latin American countries to document changes in poverty and inequality during the 1990s. We show that there is no country in Latin America where inequality declined during the 1990s. Poverty declined in 10 or 11 of the 17 countries for which household surveys are available to us, depending on the poverty measured used. Persistently high inequality inhibited further poverty reduction.

Suggested Citation

  • Miguel Székely, 2001. "The 1990s in Latin America: Another Decade of Persistent Inequality, but with Somewhat Lower Poverty," Research Department Publications 4271, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:idb:wpaper:4271
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iadb.org/research/pub_hits.cfm?pub_id=WP-454&pub_file_name=pubWP-454.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Psacharopoulos, G. & Morley, S. & Fiszbein, A. & Lee, H. & Wood, B., 1997. "Poverty and Income Distribution in Latin America: The Story of the 1980s," Papers 351, World Bank - Technical Papers.
    2. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    3. Marianne Hilgert & Miguel Sz kely, 1999. "Whats Behind the Inequality We Measure? An Investigation Using Latin American Data," LIS Working papers 234, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    4. Morley, Samuel A., 2000. "La distribución de ingreso en América Latina y el Caribe," Copublicaciones, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), number 1657 edited by Cepal, November.
    5. Juan Luis Londoño & Miguel Székely, 2000. "Persistent Poverty and Excess Inequality: Latin America, 1970-1995," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 3, pages 93-134, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Suzanne Duryea & Carmen Pagés-Serra, 2002. "Políticas de capital humano: qué pueden conseguir y qué no en cuanto a la productividad y la reducción de la pobreza en América Latina," Research Department Publications 4298, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    2. Duryea, Suzanne & Pagés, Carmen, 2002. "Human Capital Policies: What they Can and Cannot Do for Productivity and Poverty Reduction in Latin America," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 1103, Inter-American Development Bank.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Miguel Székely, 2001. "Los años 90 en América Latina: otra década de desigualdad persistente, pero con un poco menos de pobreza," Research Department Publications 4272, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    2. Miguel Szekely & Nora Lustig & Martin Cumpa & Jose Antonio Mejia, 2004. "Do we know how much poverty there is?," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(4), pages 523-558.
    3. Miguel Székely & Nora Lustig & Martin Cumpa & José Antonio Mejía-Guerra, 2000. "¿Sabemos qué tanta pobreza hay?," Research Department Publications 4240, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    4. James E. Foster & Miguel Székely, 2008. "Is Economic Growth Good For The Poor? Tracking Low Incomes Using General Means," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1143-1172, November.
    5. James E. Foster & Miguel Székely, 2001. "¿Es el crecimiento económico bueno para los pobres? Seguimiento del ingreso bajo con medias generales," Research Department Publications 4270, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    6. Leonardo Gasparini & Federico Gutiérrez & Leopoldo Tornarolli, 2007. "Growth And Income Poverty In Latin America And The Caribbean: Evidence From Household Surveys," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(2), pages 209-245, June.
    7. Leonardo Gasparini & Matías Horenstein & Sergio Olivieri, 2006. "Economic Polarisation in Latin America and the Caribbean: What do Household Surveys Tell Us?," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0038, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    8. Morley, Samuel A., 2001. "Distribution and growth in Latin America in an era of structural reform," TMD discussion papers 66, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    9. Shijiang Chen & Mingyue Liang & Wen Yang, 2022. "Does Digital Financial Inclusion Reduce China’s Rural Household Vulnerability to Poverty: An Empirical Analysis From the Perspective of Household Entrepreneurship," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, June.
    10. Khanna, Neha, 2000. "Measuring environmental quality: an index of pollution," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 191-202, November.
    11. Chakravarty, Satya R. & Deutsch, Joseph & Silber, Jacques, 2008. "On the Watts Multidimensional Poverty Index and its Decomposition," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1067-1077, June.
    12. Xuming He & Heng Xi & Xianbo Li, 2024. "Multi-Dimensional Decomposition, Measurement, and Governance Mechanism of Relative Poverty in Chinese Households under the Goal of Common Prosperity: Empirical Analysis Based on CFPS2020 Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-25, June.
    13. Hongliang Wang & Yiwen Yu, 2016. "Increasing health inequality in China: An empirical study with ordinal data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(1), pages 41-61, March.
    14. Alejandro Lopez-Feldman, 2013. "Climate change, agriculture, and poverty: A household level analysis for rural Mexico," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(2), pages 1126-1139.
    15. Alonso-Villar, Olga & del Río, Coral, 2010. "Local versus overall segregation measures," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 30-38, July.
    16. Augustin Kwasi Fosu, 2009. "Inequality and the Impact of Growth on Poverty: Comparative Evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(5), pages 726-745.
    17. Khan, Haider A., 1999. "Sectoral Growth and Poverty Alleviation: A Multiplier Decomposition Technique Applied to South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 521-530, March.
    18. Tomoki Fujii, 2013. "Geographic decomposition of inequality in health and wealth: evidence from Cambodia," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 11(3), pages 373-392, September.
    19. Bruno, Michael & Ravallion, Martin & Squire, Lyn, 1996. "Equity and growth in developing countries : old and new perspectives on the policy issues," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1563, The World Bank.
    20. Nicholas Moellman, 2020. "Healthcare and Hunger: Effects of the ACA Medicaid Expansions on Food Insecurity in America," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(2), pages 168-186, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:idb:wpaper:4271. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Felipe Herrera Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iadbbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.