This paper selectively synthesizes much of the research on Latin American and Caribbean labor markets in recent years. Several themes emerge that are particularly relevant to ongoing policy dialogues. First, labor legislation matters, but markets may be less segmented than previously thought....

Did the types of jobs that men and women hold change during the recent period of economic reforms in Argentina, Brazil, and Costa Rica? Among both men and women in all three countries (except Brazilian men), workers have become more likely to hold informal wage jobs and less likely to hold...

Home-based work, defined as nonprofessionals who perform market work from their homes, is an increasingly recognized form of employment in Latin America. The majority of the research on this segment of the labor force relies on small sample, qualitative data, which find that home-based workers...

Latin American countries are generally characterized as displaying high income and earnings inequality overall along with high inequality by gender, race, and ethnicity. However, the latter phenomenon is not a major contributor to the former phenomenon. Using household survey data from four...

A new literature on the nature of and policies for youth in Latin America is emerging, but there is still very little known about who are the most vulnerable young people. This paper aims to characterize the heterogeneity in the youth population and identify ex ante the youth that are at-risk...

This study constructs three indices to measure how well Brazil's young people are surviving their transition to adulthood. Youth development is difficult to quantify because of the multi-dimensionality of youth behavior. Most monitoring use individual indicators in specific sectors, making it...