Introduction

Abstract

According to the UNDP report (2010), three features describe inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean. Inequality “is high, it is persistent and it reproduces itself in a context of low socioeconomic mobility”. The same report notes that these features cut across countries in different growth periods, across different political regimes and across different public intervention strategies. The persistence of inequity in Latin America under such diverse regimes and policies is so exceptional that it is hardly surprising that the literature on these issues has been particularly prolific in the region in recent years. Access to longitudinal databases has shifted the emphasis towards the dynamics and determinants of poverty and income mobility, and their close correlation with inequality. López-Calva and Lustig (2010), by contrast, offer a mildly optimistic view, noting that from 2000 onwards two out of every three countries in the region recorded a decline in inequality. Examining the possible causes of that decline, the authors conclude that it has been driven, on the one hand, by the narrowing of the wage gap between the more and the less educated (itself a result of the expansion of primary school coverage) and, on the other, by government transfer policies targeted at the poor. This is encouraging, in that it underscores the role of public policy in reducing inequality over the medium term.