Despite the recovery of economic growth in Latin America during the 1990s, rising unemployment, high informality rates and sluggish wages lie at the root of high inequality and poverty. This paper looks at changes in hourly earnings from the early 1990s to the early 2000s in three relatively...

Following the 1994 financial crisis, the rate of saving of the Mexican economy fell from 21. 7 percent to 19. 8 percent of GDP. The decline was associated with a reduction in the rate of external saving from 6. 9 to 0. 5 percent between 1994 and 1995. The overall reduction was not more dramatic...

In this paper we contrast the impact of the income gap between formal and informal sector on Mexico's income inequality to alternative explanations. Unlike previous studies we take a time series approach to analyze the determinants of income inequality for the period 1987-1999. We find that an...

This paper provides an overview of poverty in North America. In it we look at the three countries of North America, Mexico, the US, and to a lesser extent Canada and attempt to both describe poverty as it exists in the three countries and explore some of the correlates of poverty. In doing so,...

This paper examines changes in individual earnings during positive and negative growth periods in three Latin American economies: Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela. We ask whether those individuals who start in the best economic position are those who experience the largest earnings gains or the...

The relationship between firms and inequality has been a focus of recent attention globally. This chapter summarizes basic facts about this relationship for Latin America. Unlike advanced economies where superstar firm growth has prompted concerns over disproportionate income growth at the top,...

This paper develops a micro-econometric method to account for differences across distributions of household income. Going beyond the determination of earnings in labor markets, we also estimate statistical models for occupational choice and for the conditional distributions of education,...

Inequality in Mexico rose between 1989 and 1994 and declined between 1994 and 2010. We examine the role of market forces (demand and supply of labour by skill), institutional factors (minimum wages and unionization rate), and public policy (cash transfers) in explaining changes in inequality. We...

In this paper I examine the trend in income inequality and poverty among the selfemployed workers in Mexico over the last two decades (1984–2002). This is the period over which Mexico opened its economy to the global market through trade and investment liberalization. For the first decade...