We decompose changes of the Gini coefficient to investigate whether the Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) have had an inequality reducing effect in three Latin American countries: Brazil, Mexico and Chile. The technique used is decomposition of the Gini coefficient by factor components. The main...

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...

This Working Paper decomposes changes in the Gini coefficient in order to investigate whether Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) have had an inequality reducing effect in three Latin American countries: Brazil, Mexico and Chile. Its technique is the decomposition of the Gini coefficient by factor...

This paper evaluates the contribution of cash transfer programmes to the observed fall in inequality in Brazil between 1995 and 2004 as well as its impact on poverty. We use the 2004 Brazilian National Household Survey (PNAD) that for the first time collected data on the incidence of some of the...

Insufficient labour income and limited access to employment are critical problems that policy makers must address when designing development strategies in Latin American countries. The persistence of the high incidence of poverty and inequality can be explained largely by the poor performance of...

[Introduction] The trade-off between targeting and coverage has always been something of a quandary for progressive cash transfers, particularly those that are not entitlements. Undue inclusion errors mean that families or individuals whose need is not so great are being paid at the expense of...

In 2006, the Bolsa Família Program completed its expansion, expecting to cover 11 million beneficiary families. The objective of this article is to evaluate whether this implied in deterioration in the program's efficient targeting and whether the target of 11 million families in fact covers...