This paper provides a synthesis of the four papers on the Latin American and Caribbean economies: Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. It focuses on the following themes: macroeconomic stabilization and fiscal challenges, poverty and inequality, and the use of natural resources...

The paper tracks recent changes in the components of social protection in Latin America, the reforms to social insurance in the 1990s and the growth of social assistance in the 2000s, and assesses their effects on poverty and inequality and implications for welfare institutions in the region....

During the 2000s, Brazil experienced slow economic growth and a substantial improvement in labour market indicators. From 2001 to 2012, Brazil grew less than the Latin American average. However, the unemployment rate decreased, the employment composition improved, the educational level of...

In this paper, we present comparative evidence for eight Latin American countries regarding design and effects of cash transfers (CTs). On the basis of household survey data, we analyse their coverage, importance in household income, and effects on poverty reduction and income redistribution. We...

We analyse the effect of taxes and benefits on income distribution of six Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Our analysis makes use of tax-benefit microsimulation models based on harmonized household representative survey data and developed...

This paper examines Chile Solidario, a social protection programme that provides poor households in Chile with preferential access to a conditional cash transfer programme designed to facilitate investments in children's health and education. We assess the programme's longer-term impact on...

We study the causal effect of motherhood on labour market outcomes in Latin America by adopting an event study approach around the birth of the first child based on panel data from national household surveys for Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. Our main contributions are: (i) providing new and...

The COVID-19 pandemic drastically affected household incomes around the world. In developed economies, pre-pandemic tax-benefit policies and emergency transfers mitigated to a large extent the negative income shock. However, less is known about the effect of government intervention on household...