In many developing countries, there does not exist a time series of nationally repre- sentative household budget or income surveys, while there often are urban household surveys as well as nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) which lack information on incomes. This...

We provide an update on the impact the COVID-19 pandemic on the demand for cash and the use of methods of payment based on data from the Bank Note Distribution System and from consumer surveys conducted in April and August 2021. Our key findings are as follows: Cash in circulation remained high...

Most existing empirical papers concerned about multidimensional poverty use the house- hold as the unit of analysis, meaning that multidimensional poverty status of the household is equated with the multidimensional poverty status of all individuals in the household. This assumption,...

The United Nations Human Development Index (HDI) is arguably the most widely used alternative to gross domestic product for measuring national development. This is in large part due to its multidimensional nature, as it incorporates not only income, but also education and health. However, the...

This paper analyzes the evolution of income inequality and characterizes income mobility in Uruguay during the period 2009-2012, focusing on top income groups. The study exploits novel individual-level panel data based on personal income tax records, which contain information on income, taxes...

Between 2000 and 2010, the Gini coefficient declined in 13 of 17 Latin American countries. The decline was statistically significant and robust to changes in the time interval, inequality measures, and data sources. In-depth country studies for Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico suggest two main...

This paper presents a simple theoretical framework to explain variations in income inequality over time and between countries. It also analyses the factors responsible for the widespread rise in inequality during the neo-liberal reforms of 1980-2000 in the fields of trade, foreign direct...

After increasing over more than a decade, recent studies based on household surveys data show that income inequality in Uruguay started to decline in 2008. In this study we assess whether this trend is robust to the use of novel micro-data from the recently restored Uruguayan personal income tax...

We examine the extent to which education is a main determinant of affluence in Brazil. We focus on workers in the top 1% of the labor earnings distribution. We use university courses data from the Sample Questionnaire of the 2010 Census. Our main conclusion is that while education may be...

This paper presents new evidence on the study of income mobility in Ecuador over the period 2004 - 11. We utilize longitudinal data of individual income tax returns to measure income mobility both at the top and at the middle of the income distribution, and we find three main empirical results....