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2. Environmental Justice in the Age of Unnatural Disaster
- Author:
- Chris N. Lesser
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
- Abstract:
- The recent mudslides in Petrópolis are just the latest examples of the issues of unequal access to land and precarious housing in Brazil.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Environment, Natural Disasters, Inequality, Justice, Land, and Housing
- Political Geography:
- Brazil and South America
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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
6. The Pandemic Strikes: Responding to Colombia’s Mass Protests
- Author:
- International Crisis Group
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- In Colombia’s history of protest, the 2021 mobilisations against inequality and police brutality stand out for their breadth and intensity. Unrest has quieted for now but could soon return. The government should urgently reform the security sector while working to narrow the country’s socio-economic chasms.
- Topic:
- Governance, Inequality, Protests, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Social Order
- Political Geography:
- Colombia and South America
7. 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
8. 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
9. The Pandemic Strikes: Responding to Colombia’s Mass Protests
- Author:
- International Crisis Group
- Publication Date:
- 07-2021
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- In Colombia’s history of protest, the 2021 mobilisations against inequality and police brutality stand out for their breadth and intensity. Unrest has quieted for now but could soon return. The government should urgently reform the security sector while working to narrow the country’s socio-economic chasms.
- Topic:
- Inequality, State Violence, Protests, and Police Brutality
- Political Geography:
- Colombia and South America
10. 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
11. 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
12. From Bad To Worse? The Impact(s) of Covid-19 On Conflict Dynamics
- Author:
- Katariina Mustasilta
- Publication Date:
- 06-2020
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- European Union Institute for Security Studies
- Abstract:
- In December 2019, when the novel strain of coronavirus first hit the headlines, 12 countries in the world were experiencing organised violence on an extensive scale, with more than 100 incidents of violence and attacks against civilians recorded in that month. To most of these countries, the virus seemed a distant threat at the time. Yet, a few months and over 7 million recorded Covid-19 cases later, it has evolved from a distant threat to a stark reality. The global crisis – which has unleashed an emergency in the world’s public health, political, and economic systems simultaneously – has subjected even the most stable societies to unprecedented disruption. In conflict-affected countries, i.e. countries with ongoing conflicts or a high risk of relapse into conflict, and countries emerging from conflicts, the pandemic has added another layer on top of often multiple existing layers of crisis. Against the backdrop of expert warnings over the particular vulnerabilities of conflict-affected countries to Covid-19, this Brief analyses key emerging dynamics and repercussions in conflict-affected countries in general, and in five countries in particular: Colombia, Libya, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen. The focus here is especially on conflicts and countries previously covered by our Conflict Series, so as to build on already accumulated analysis. The Brief identifies three main ways in which the global crisis impacts conflict-affected countries. First, the pandemic itself risks exacerbating inequalities and further burdening already vulnerable groups within conflict-affected societies. Second, local and external conflict parties are quick to capitalise on various opportunities arising from the policy responses to the crisis which also complicate peace and crisis management efforts. Third, the economic fallout puts severe strain on already weak state institutions and undermines governance outcomes (thus increasing the risk of conflict). Of these three dimensions, the policy responses and distraction created by the pandemic have thus far had the most significant repercussions for conflict dynamics, unfortunately often for the worse. The global scale of the crisis and its continuing evolution complicate efforts to seize momentum for peace and set the pandemic apart from previous catastrophic/disruptive events, such as the tsunami in 2004, that in some cases led to a positive shift in local conflict dynamics. The Brief is structured as follows: the main text analyses the emerging trends catalysed by the pandemic crisis in conflict-affected contexts, while the case study boxes discuss the unfolding processes in specific countries. The last section discusses the policy options for preventing further escalatory repercussions.
- Topic:
- War, Inequality, Conflict, Crisis Management, and COVID-19
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Middle East, Asia, South America, North Africa, North America, and Africa
13. 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
14. The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility: Evidence of Educational Persistence and the "Great Gatsby Curve" in Brazil
- Author:
- Tharcisio Leone
- Publication Date:
- 07-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- German Institute of Global and Area Studies
- Abstract:
- This paper explores the variation in intergenerational educational mobility across the Brazilian states based on Markov transition matrixes and univariate econometric techniques. The analysis of the national household survey (PNAD-2014) confirms a strong variation in mobility among the 27 federative units in Brazil and demonstrates a significant correlation between mobility and income inequality. In this sense, this work presents empirical evidence for the existence of the "Great Gatsby curve" within a single country: states with greater income disparities present higher levels of persistence in educational levels across generations. Finally, I investigate one specific mechanism behind this correlation – namely, whether higher income inequality might lead to a lower investment in human capital among children from socially vulnerable households. The paper delivers robust and compelling results showing that children born into families where the parents have not completed primary education have a statistically significant reduction in their chance of completing the educational system if they live in states with a higher level of income inequality.
- Topic:
- Education, Children, Inequality, and Mobility
- Political Geography:
- Brazil and South America
15. Inequality in Brazil: Inclusive growth trend of this millennium is over
- Author:
- Marcelo Neri
- Publication Date:
- 05-2019
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- After three decades of persistently high inequality, Brazil has been experiencing a downward trend since 2001, accompanied by a rise in household incomes. These trends lasted until 2014 when a major reversal took place on both fronts.
- Topic:
- Education, Inequality, Finance, and Income Inequality
- Political Geography:
- Brazil and South America
16. 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
17. Integral Human Development Through the Lens of Sen’s Capability Approach and the Life of a Faith Community at the Latin American Urban Margins
- Author:
- Séverine Deneulin
- Publication Date:
- 04-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- The concept of integral human development is central to the Catholic social tradition. Yet, it remains under-explored with regard to its integrating components and their implications. What does taking an integral human development perspective mean for social analysis and action? The paper seeks to answer this question on the basis of the four encyclicals in which the idea of integral human development is treated, and in combination with two other sources: 1) the literature on “human development” in the multidisciplinary social science field of international development studies and its conceptual foundations in Amartya Sen’s capability approach; and 2) the life of a faith community in a marginalized Latin American urban neighborhood. Based on a combination of these sources, the paper concludes by proposing an understanding of “integral human development” that it calls a spirituality-extended capability approach to the progress of peoples.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, Education, Poverty, Religion, Inequality, Youth, Violence, Christianity, and Catholic Church
- Political Geography:
- Argentina, South America, and Latin America
18. Can Conditional Cash Transfer Programs Improve Collective Action? Lab-in-the-Field Evidence on Coordination and Social Norms
- Author:
- Sandra Polanía-Reyes
- Publication Date:
- 12-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- This study tests an unintended benefit of a conditional cash transfer program in Colombia: the ability to overcome coordination failures. Participants interact with fellow beneficiaries, which gives rise to a coordination device. Beneficiaries participate in a minimum effort coordination game. Those enrolled in the program for over a year are exerting the highest level of effort. The improvement in coordination is not due to potential confounds such as willingness to cooperate or connectivity. A structural choice model illustrates that when beliefs about other’s behavior are sufficiently high the Pareto- dominant equilibrium holds. The findings support nascent initiatives to influence beliefs through policy interventions.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, Political Economy, Poverty, Communications, Governance, Inequality, Economic Growth, Public Policy, and Institutions
- Political Geography:
- Colombia, South America, and Latin America
19. Earnings inequality in the Brazilian formal sector: The role of firms, education, and top incomes 1994–2015
- Author:
- Marcelo Neri, Cecilia Machado, and Valdemar Pinho Neto
- Publication Date:
- 12-2018
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper documents the evolution and the determinants of earnings inequality in the Brazilian formal sector from 1994 to 2015, using establishment level data. In 2015, schooling explained 33 per cent of overall inequality. Firm-specific effects explain 65 per cent of total inequality level and 76 per cent of the inequality fall observed. The downward inequality trend parallels the one seen in household surveys. However, the distributive decompression goes only until the 90th percentile, which is in line with Personal Income Tax based evidence. The share of inequality explained by top 1 per cent and 0.1 per cent incomes rose 43 per cent and 91 per cent, respectively.
- Topic:
- Education, Employment, Inequality, and Business
- Political Geography:
- Brazil and South America
20. Inequality in India on the rise
- Author:
- Hai-Anh Dang and Peter Lanjouw
- Publication Date:
- 12-2018
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Following the introduction of economic reforms in the early 1990s, India today is achieving unprecedented per capita growth rates. Poverty reduction has also accelerated and is justly celebrated. There is great concern, however, that this growth is being accompanied by rising inequality.
- Topic:
- Economics, Reform, Inequality, and Economic Growth
- Political Geography:
- India and South America