To comprehend how development really happens, it is necessary to understand the evolution of its drivers and their relationship with individuals' income. This paper analyzes the expansion of access to education and basic services in Latin America and its association with the evolution of incomes...

Over the past decade, 12 of 14 Latin American countries have experienced a reduction in inequality. Based on a series of counterfactual simulations, the observed changes in inequality are decomposed in order to identify the main determinants of inequality. In contrast to methods that focus on...

Household income inequality has declined in Latin America in the past decades, contributing significantly to poverty reduction in the region. Although available evidence shows that changes in the labor income are among the main factors behind these inequality trends, few studies have analyzed...

This study uses text mining techniques on almost 900 presidential "state-of-the-union" --type speeches from 10 Latin American countries from 1819 to 2016. The paper documents a sharp increase in recent decades in references to poverty and inequality. The study's long-term view shows that the way...

Although there is wide recognition of the negative consequences of policy volatility for countries' long-term economic growth, there is limited empirical work on this subject. One of the reasons is the difficulty of measuring policy volatility over long periods of time, especially in developing...

This paper shows evidence that suggests the economic slowdown in Latin America and the Caribbean has already translated into slowing social gains, including decelerating poverty reduction, stagnating growth of the middle class, and lower income growth. The countries of South America outperformed...