E c o n o m i c &
Social Affairs
DESA Working Paper No. 22
ST/ESA/2006/DWP/22
June 2006
Equity in Latin America Since the 1990s
Pedro Sáinz
Pedro Sáinz is a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank, United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas (INE) Chile and Instituto
Brasileiro de Geografi a e Statistica (IBGE) on public information systems as well as on poverty
analysis and policies. He was Director of the Economic Projections Centre and of the Statistical
Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Santiago (ECLAC).
Since his retirement in 2000, he has written articles on Latin American social development and
given advice to Latin American institutions on public information systems.
Comments should be addressed by email to the author at psainz@eclac.cl.
Abstract
This paper deals with the social welfare consequences of the stagnation of Latin American growth
per capita during the far-reaching economic and social changes that took place during the pe-
riod 1980-2003. This period of transformation saw large-scale foreign actors gradually increase
their economic and political power in Latin America, with negative consequences for domestic
economies, especially in terms of increasing income inequality and rising poverty. The only major
tendency mitigating these adverse trends was an increase in public expenditure in the social sector
during the 1990s, which offset, but did not eliminate, the increased inequality associated with the
economic transformation.
JEL Classifi cation: O11 (Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development); O17 (Formal
and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements: Legal, Social, Economic
and Political); O40 (General); O54 (Latin America; Caribbean); I28 (Government Policy); I32
(Measurement and Analysis of Poverty).
Keywords: Latin America, economic change, poverty, income distribution, social policy, health,
education.
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