Living with Duality: Fiscal Policy and Informality in Latin America

Although hard to measure, informality is by all accounts high in Latin America: about half of the region’s working population can be considered informal. In Mexico, the only Latin American country that belongs to the OECD, up to 60 per cent of non-agricultural workers – almost 22 million people – are employed informally or self-employed. These working people have opted out or have been shut out of the formal system of taxes and social protection. In that sense, they bear witness to a broken social contract between citizens and the state.