Search

Begin New Search Topic Inequality Political Geography South America Content Type Working Paper Publication Year within 10 Years

1. Inequality in Chile: Perceptions and Patterns

Author:
Ignacia Lecaros, Daniela Paz Cruzat, Ricardo Pommer Muñoz, Pablo Tillan, and Michael Walton
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Chile has pioneered many things: a market-oriented, “neoliberal” approach to development; an impressive transition from authoritarianism to democracy; innovations in social policy; and an extraordinary series of street protests between 2006 and 2019. While often lauded as a model of economic and social development, the protests reflect acute concerns over perceived failures in the Chilean political, economic and cultural system, concerns that were profoundly inflected with issues of inequality and lack of fairness. To inform this contrast, this paper undertakes a systematic assessment of the perceptions and perspectives of Chilean citizens, both in the context of the protests and in their broader expressed views in surveys. The core theme is that “the street was right”, in the specific sense that the protests reflected much wider sentiments across social classes over perceived inequities in economic advancement, social provisioning, and the undignified “treatment” by state actors and elites. The paper then compares these perceptions with some of the “objective” measures of inequality. While alternative measures indicate modest declines in some measures of inequality, Chile remains a very high inequality society, in relation to income, wealth, and education. These perceptions and patterns are central to Chile’s current development challenges, in ways that resonate with the position of many countries in today’s polarized environment. This is the first of two papers, with the sequel exploring the underlying drivers of inequality and implications for policy direction.
Topic:
Education, Health, Inequality, Protests, State, Perception, and Fairness
Political Geography:
South America and Chile

2. Social Policy Expansion and Retrenchment After Latin America’s Commodity Boom

Author:
Sara Niedzwiecki and Jennifer Pribble
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The literature on social policy expansion and retrenchment in Latin America is vast, but scholars differ in how they explain the outcomes, arriving at different conclusions about the role of democracy, left parties, favorable economic conditions, and social movements in shaping reform. What can welfare state developments since the end of the commodity boom teach us about the theoretical power of these arguments? This paper engages this question, seeking to explain recent incidents of social policy reform in 10 presidential administrations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. Using a combination of crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA) and case studies, we identify multiple paths toward social policy expansion and retrenchment that involve the absence and presence of electoral competition, economic resources, party ideology and linkage mechanism, social movement pressure, international pressure, and legacies. The results show that while both parties of the left and right expanded social programs, only the right engaged in retrenchment, yet partisanship alone is insufficient for explaining reform outcomes, as the variable must appear in combination with other factors depending on the party’s linkage mechanism. The results provide new insight into the politics of social policy reform in Latin America, showing the relevance of complex forms of causality.
Topic:
Health, Poverty, Social Movement, Democracy, Inequality, Public Policy, and Political Parties
Political Geography:
Brazil, Argentina, South America, Uruguay, Latin America, and Chile

3. Inclusion amid ethnic inequality: Insights from Brazil’s social protection system

Author:
Natasha Borges Sugiyama
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Policy frames in Brazil have long run up against conflicting visions and understandings about the causes and consequences of group-based inequality. This paper argues that a class-based lens has dominated the social protection framework. In recent years, political leaders have framed social policy measures along ‘universal’ class lines with the aim of improving poverty and wellbeing. This framing is reflective of Brazil’s national narrative on race relations and the idea that class and employment status have been the most salient barriers to social welfare protections. Brazil’s widely well-regarded anti-poverty conditional cash transfer programme, Bolsa Família (2003–21), is emblematic of the country’s universal and ‘race-blind’ approach to social policy. But given the strong correlation in Brazil between ethnicity and income, social protection policies such as the Bolsa Família have indirectly targeted vulnerable black and brown citizens. The analysis addresses how social policy has contributed advances to wellbeing in general and for Afro-Brazilians. A comparative perspective on social welfare systems offers important lessons on how poverty relief can further human development and enhance agency. Future reformers can learn from Brazil’s pursuit of poverty reduction alongside administrative procedures that identify vulnerable groups, as a strategy to address intersectional inequalities of ethnicity and class.
Topic:
Poverty, Race, Inequality, and Welfare
Political Geography:
Brazil and South America

4. A decomposition method to evaluate the ‘paradox of progress’ with evidence for Argentina

Author:
Javier Alejo, Leonardo Gasparini, Gabriel Montes-Rojas, and Walter Sosa-Escudero
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
The ‘paradox of progress’ is an empirical regularity that associates more education with larger income inequality. Two driving and competing factors behind this phenomenon are the convexity of the ‘Mincer equation’ (that links wages and education) and the heterogeneity in its returns, as captured by quantile regressions. We propose a joint least-squares and quantile regression statistical framework to derive a decomposition in order to evaluate the relative contribution of each explanation. The estimators are based on the ‘functional derivative’ approach. We apply the proposed decomposition strategy to the case of Argentina 1992 to 2015.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Inequality, Quantile Regression, and Paradox of Progress
Political Geography:
Argentina and South America

5. Building back better after the COVID-19 pandemic

Author:
Miguel Jaramillo and Bruno Escobar
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE)
Abstract:
In this policy-oriented paper, we provide a pre- and post-pandemic socioeconomic analysis of Peru, along with a financially sustainable five-year Building Back Better recovery plan, which emphasizes the urgency of addressing some of the country’s structural weaknesses. We underscore the importance of public investment for this effort, but widen the focus to include current public expenditure, in order to take steps towards building a more universal social protection system. We show that this also contributes to reducing the gender imbalances in the labor market that the pandemic exposed and exacerbated. We provide a financial programming exercise that demonstrates that the plan is financially responsible under a reasonable fiscal rule. Four core ideas stand out from our analysis. Firstly, while public investment can be key to reigniting economic growth, it does not go very far in tackling structural weaknesses. Secondly, public spending in health can actually achieve this from two fronts: by beginning to build a universal access social protection system and by addressing gender imbalances in the labor market. Thirdly, focusing public discussion on social protection enables a broader approach to policy reform by including formal employment and productivity enhancing reforms, which are essential for the sustainability of a broad social protection system. Finally, we also show that the sector mix in public investment has an impact on employment results, both in terms of the volume of jobs generated and their gender composition.
Topic:
Health, Inequality, COVID-19, Socioeconomics, Public Spending, and Gender
Political Geography:
South America and Peru

6. Both hard and soft corporate practices construct and secure industrial mining operations: The case of Colombia

Author:
Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
This DIIS Working Paper elaborates how local consent to a huge industrial mining complex, including a port and a 150 km railway built in the 1980’s on indigenous arid lands, were created. Showing how both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ security technologies were effective in preparing the complex, constructing the necessary infrastructure and securing the operation, the paper at the same time illustrates how corporate security practices have changed over time in the northern part of Colombia. The paper is based on extended ethnographic fieldwork in La Guajira, Colombia, carried out through 2018 and 2019 as well as historical written documents.
Topic:
Security, Environment, Oil, Poverty, Natural Resources, Non State Actors, Gas, Capitalism, Inequality, Economy, Conflict, Ethnography, Violence, Investment, Justice, Land Rights, and Minerals
Political Geography:
Colombia, South America, and Latin America

7. The Political Economy of Inequality in Chile and Mexico: Two Tales of Neoliberalism

Author:
Giorgos Gouzoulis and Collin Constantine
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
This article offers a historical and econometric study on the determinants of functional income inequality in Chile and Mexico between 1980-2011. This is the first study on the determinants of the labour share in developing economies using single- country analysis that covers the historical period before 1990. We find robust evidence that government consumption is a positive driver of the respective wage shares. Since Chile has experienced persistent cuts in government welfare as opposed to Mexico, fiscal austerity is a fundamental explanation for its falling wage share. Private debt is the second most important explanation for why wage shares have fallen in Chile. We find no evidence of this channel in the Mexican case. However, globalisation has exposed Mexico’s labour-intensive industries to wage competition and this lowers its wage share. In contrast, Chile’s commodity exports and wage share have benefitted from trade globalisation. These comparative results demonstrate the importance of country-level studies as each country’s historical evolution and varied implementation of neoliberalism can tell unique distributional stories and provide more accurate policy insights for an inclusive growth strategy.
Topic:
Political Economy, Labor Issues, Inequality, and Neoliberalism
Political Geography:
South America, North America, Mexico, and Chile

8. The Risk of Automation in Argentina

Author:
Guillermo Falcone and Carlo Lombardo
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
In this paper we characterize workers’ vulnerability to automation in the near future in Argentina as a function of the exposure to routinization of the tasks that they perform and the potential automation of their occupation. In order to do that we combine (i) indicators of potential automatability by occupation and (ii) worker’s information on occupation and other labor variables. We find that the ongoing process of automation is likely to significantly affect the structure of employment. In particular, unskilled and semi-skilled workers are likely to bear a disproportionate share of the adjustment costs. Automation will probably be a more dangerous threat for equality than for overall employment.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Employment, Inequality, Job Creation, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
Argentina and South America

9. Brazil’s Amazon: The Wealth of the Earth Generates the Poverty of Humankind

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
As the world’s largest tropical forest, the wealthiest area in minerals, and the main biogenetic reserve on the planet, the Amazon is among the most sought-after territories by global capital. As the attack against the Amazon advances under Brazil’s right-wing Jair Bolsonaro, analyzes the advance of capital in the region, providing a analysis of the international and national scope of mining and agribusiness projects, agrarian conflicts, and the devastation of biodiversity, as well as the challenges facing everyday people.
Topic:
Poverty, Natural Resources, Inequality, and Wealth
Political Geography:
Brazil and South America

10. Shared Class as an Electoral Heuristic in Brazil’s Local Elections

Author:
Peter G. Johannessen
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Do voters use a candidate’s class as an electoral heuristic? And if so, how? Drawing on observational and experimental evidence from Brazil’s local elections (2004–2016), I provide evidence that voters use shared class to draw inferences about a candidate’s type: candidates from different classes receive similar overall levels of support, but receive disproportionate support from voters who share their class. The mechanisms driving this finding vary by a voter’s relative class position: upper-class voters use shared class to draw inferences about a candidate’s quality, trustworthiness, and distributive commitments, but lower-class voters only use shared class to draw inferences about a candidate’s trustworthiness and distributive commitments.
Topic:
Politics, Poverty, Democracy, Inequality, Citizenship, and Identities
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, and Latin America