Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean PDF Download

Author: Ricardo Paes de Barros
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821377469
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Equality of opportunity is about leveling the playing field so that circumstances such as gender, ethnicity, place of birth, or family background do not influence a person s life chances. Success in life should depend on people s choices, effort and talents, not to their circumstances at birth. 'Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean' introduces new methods for measuring inequality of opportunities and makes an assessment of its evolution in Latin America over a decade. An innovative Human Opportunity Index and other parametric and non-parametric techniques are presented for quantifying inequality based on circumstances exogenous to individual efforts. These methods are applied to gauge inequality of opportunities in access to basic services for children, learning achievement for youth, and income and consumption for adults.

Author: José R. Molinas Vega
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821386999
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
The (Human Opportunity Index) HOI calculates how personal circumstances (like birthplace, wealth, race or gender) impact a child's probability of accessing the services that are necessary to succeed in life, like timely education, running water or connection to electricity. It was first published in 2008, applied to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The findings were eye-opening: behind the enormous inequality that characterizes the region's distribution of development outcomes (income, land ownership and educational attainment, among others), there is an even more worrying inequality of development opportunities. It is not only rewards that are unequal; it is also chances. The problem is not just about equality; it is about equity too. The playing field is uneven from the start. This book reports on the status and evolution of human opportunity in LAC. It builds on the 2008 publication in several directions. First, it uses newly-available data to expand the set of opportunities and personal circumstances under analysis. The data is representative of some 200 million children living in 19 countries over the last 15 years. Second, it compares human opportunity in LAC with that of developed countries, among them the US and France, two very different models of social policy. This allows for illuminating exercises in benchmarking and extrapolation. And third, it looks at human opportunity within countries across regions, states and cities. This gives us a preliminary glimpse at the geographic dimension of equity, and at the role that different federal structures play. The overall message that emerges is one of cautious hope. LAC is making progress in opening the doors of development to all. But it still has a long way to go. At the current pace, it would take, on average, a generation for the region to achieve universal access to just the basic services that make for human opportunity. Seen from the viewpoint of equity, even most successful nations lag far behind the developed world. And intra-county regional disparities are large, and barely converging. Fortunately, there is much policy makers can do about it.

Author:
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Caribbean Area
Languages : en
Pages : 41

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Book Description

Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 9264685936
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Many Latin American countries have experienced improvements in income over recent decades, with several of them now classified as high-income or upper middle-income in terms of conventional metrics. But has this change been mirrored in improvements across the different areas of people’s lives? How’s Life in Latin America? Measuring Well-being for Policy Making addresses this question by presenting comparative evidence for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) with a focus on 11 LAC countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay).

Author: Richard Legé Harris
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742555242
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
For an additional chapter on health and human security: Click Here. For suggested resources for each chapter in the book: Click Here. For additional resources on ecological and social issues: Click Here. For additional resources on indigenous peoples: Click Here. Comprehensive and interdisciplinary, this thoroughly updated and revised second edition is an engaging critical analysis of the major political, economic, social, and ecological conditions in Latin America and the Caribbean. Genuinely regional in scope, this textbook examines the hemispheric and global context of these conditions as well as the relations among Latin American and Caribbean states and their relations with the United States. Expert contributors describe and analyze the economies and trading relations, politics and state policies, social inequalities and social injustices, indigenous communities, gender relations, influence of religion, wide array of social movements, and social ecology of the societies in this important region of the world. Harris and Nef have assembled a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate courses and all readers concerned with understanding the past, present, and future development of contemporary Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Americas as a whole. Contributions by: Guido Pascual Galafassi, Richard L. Harris, Judith Adler Hellman, Crist bal Kay, Michael Kearney, Francesca Miller, Jorge Nef, Viviana Patroni, Wilder Robles, and Stefano Varese.

Author: Luis Bértola
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319446215
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book brings together a range of ideas and theories to arrive at a deeper understanding of inequality in Latin America and its complex realities. To so, it addresses questions such as: What are the origins of inequality in Latin America? How can we create societies that are more equal in terms of income distribution, gender equality and opportunities? How can we remedy the social divide that is making Latin America one of the most unequal regions on earth? What are the roles played by market forces, institutions and ideology in terms of inequality? In this book, a group of global experts gathered by the Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean (INTAL), part of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), show readers how various types of inequality, such as economical, educational, racial and gender inequality have been practiced in countries like Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico and many others through the centuries. Presenting new ideas, new evidence, and new methods, the book subsequently analyzes how to move forward with second-generation reforms that lay the foundations for more egalitarian societies. As such, it offers a valuable and insightful guide for development economists, historians and Latin American specialists alike, as well as students, educators, policymakers and all citizens with an interest in development, inequality and the Latin American region.

Author: David M. De Ferranti
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821356658
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
Latin America and the Caribbean has been one of the regions of the world with the greatest inequality. This book explores why the region suffers from such persistent inequality, identifies how it hampers development, and suggests ways to achieve greater equity in the distribution of wealth, incomes and opportunities. The study draws on data from 20 countries based on household surveys covering 3.6 million people, and reviews extensive economic, sociological and political science studies on inequality in Latin America. Four broad areas for action by governments and civil society groups to break the destructive pattern are outlined: (1) build more open political and social institutions, that allow the poor and historically subordinate groups to gain a greater share of agency, voice and power in society; (2) ensure that economic institutions and policies seek greater equity, through sound macroeconomic management and equitable, efficient crisis resolution institutions, that avoid the large regressive redistributions that occur during crises, and that allow for saving in good times to enhance access by the poor to social safety nets in bad times; (3) increase access by the poor to high-quality public services, especially education, health, water and electricity, as well as access to farmland and the rural services, and protect and enforce the property rights of the urban poor; (4) reform income transfer programmes so that they reach the poorest families.

Author: Francisco H. G. Ferreira
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821397230
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
After decades of stagnation, the size of Latin America's middle class recently expanded to the point where, for the first time ever, the number of people in poverty is equal to the size of the middle class. This volume investigates the nature, determinants and possible consequences of this remarkable process of social transformation. We propose an original definition of the middle class, tailor-made for Latin America, centered on the concept of economic security and thus a low probability of falling into poverty. Given our definition of the middle class, there are four, not three, classes in Latin America. Sandwiched between the poor and the middle class there lies a large group of people who appear to make ends meet well enough, but do not enjoy the economic security that would be required for membership of the middle class. We call this group the 'vulnerable'. In an almost mechanical sense, these transformations in Latin America reflect both economic growth and declining inequality in over the period. We adopt a measure of mobility that decomposes the 'gainers' and 'losers' in society by social class of each household. The continent has experienced a large amount of churning over the last 15 years, at least 43% of all Latin Americans changed social classes between the mid 1990s and the end of the 2000s. Despite the upward mobility trend, intergenerational mobility, a better proxy for inequality of opportunity, remains stagnant. Educational achievement and attainment remain to be strongly dependent upon parental education levels. Despite the recent growth in pro-poor programs, the middle class has benefited disproportionally from social security transfers and are increasingly opting out from government services. Central to the region's prospects of continued progress will be its ability to harness the new middle class into a new, more inclusive social contract, where the better-off pay their fair share of taxes, and demand improved public services.

Author: Renos Vakis
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464806616
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
One out of every five Latin Americans or around 130 million people have never known anything but poverty, subsisting on less than US$4-a-day throughout their lives. These are the region ́s chronically poor, who have remained so despite unprecedented inroads against poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean since the turn of the century. Left Behind: Chronic Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean takes a closer look at the region’s entrenched poor, who and where they are, and how existing policies need to change in order to effectively assist them. The book shows significant variations of rates of chronic poverty both across and within countries. Within a single country, some regions show incidence rates up to eight times higher than the lowest. Despite the higher rates of chronic poverty in rural areas, chronic poverty is as much an urban as a rural issue. In fact, considering absolute numbers, urban areas in many countries, including Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, have more chronic poor than rural areas. Undoubtedly the region has come a long way during the decade in terms of poverty reduction, guided by a mix of sustained growth and increased levels in amounts and quality of public spending and programs targeted directly or indirectly to the chronic poor. While improving endowments and the context where the chronic poor live is a necessary condition going forward, the decade’s experience suggests that it may not be enough to reach the chronic poor. The book posits that refinements to the existing policy toolkit †“ as opposed to more programs †“ may come a long way in helping the remaining poor. These refinements include intensifying efforts to improve coordination between different social and economic programs, which can boost the income generation process and deal with the intergenerational transmission of chronic poverty by investing in early childhood development. Equally important though, there is an urgent need to adapt programs to directly address the psychological toll of chronic poverty on people’s mindset and aspirations, which currently undermines the effectiveness of the existing policy efforts.

Author: UNESCO
Publisher: United Nations
ISBN: 9210051947
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This publication assesses progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) on education and its ten targets, as well as other related education targets in the SDG agenda. It addresses inclusion in education, drawing attention to all those excluded from education, because of background or ability. The report is motivated by the explicit reference to inclusion in the 2015 Incheon Declaration, and the call to ensure an inclusive and equitable quality education in the formulation of SDG 4, the global goal for education. It reminds us that, no matter what argument may be built to the contrary, we have a moral imperative to ensure every child has a right to an appropriate education of high quality.