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

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  • 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.

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  • 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
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    File URL: http://www.iadb.org/research/pub_hits.cfm?pub_id=WP-454&pub_file_name=pubWP-454.pdf
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    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.
    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.
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    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.

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