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Inequality in Latin America : Determinants and ConsequencesLatin America is together with Sub-Saharan Africa the most unequal region of the world. This paper documents recent inequality trends in the Latin American region, going beyond traditional measures of income inequality. The paper also reviews some of the explanations that have been put forward to understand the current situation, and discusses why reducing income inequality should be an important policy priority. In particular, the authors discuss channels through which inequality can affect growth and output volatility. On the whole, the analysis suggests a two-pronged approach to reduce inequality in the region that combines policies aimed at improving the distribution of assets (especially education) with elements aimed at improving the capacity of the state to redistribute income through taxes and transfers.
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Party Age and Party Color : New Results on the Political Economy of Redistribution and InequalityThis paper advances research on
 inequality with unique, new data on income distribution in
 61 countries, including 20 Latin American countries, to
 explore the effects of political parties on redistribution.
 First, consistent with a central -- but still contested --
 assumption of the political economy literature, left-wing
 governments redistribute more. In addition, consistent with
 recent research on the importance of party organization and
 the organizational differences between younger and older
 parties, older left-wing parties are more likely to
 internalize the long-run costs of redistribution and to be
 more credible in their commitment to redistribution, leading
 them to redistribute less. With entirely different data, the
 paper also provides evidence on mechanisms: left-wing
 governments not only redistribute more, they tax more; older
 left-wing parties, though, tax less than younger ones.
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Measuring Inequality of Opportunities in Latin America and the CaribbeanOver the past decade, faster growth and smarter social policy have reversed the trend in Latin America's poverty. Too slowly and insufficiently, but undeniably, the percentage of Latinos who are poor has at long last begun to fall. This has shifted the political and policy debates from poverty toward inequality, something to be expected in a region that exhibits the world's most regressive distribution of development outcomes such as income, land ownership, and educational achievement. This book is a breakthrough in the measurement of human opportunity. It builds sophisticated formulas to answer a rather simple question: how much influence do personal circumstances have on the access that children get to the basic services that are necessary for a productive life? Needless to say, producing a methodology to measure human opportunity, and applying it across countries in one region, is just a first step. On the one hand, technical discussions and scientific vetting will continue, and refinements will surely follow. On the other, applying the new tool to a single country will allow for adjustments that make the findings much more useful to its policy realities. And fascinating comparative lessons could be learned by measuring human opportunity in developed countries across, say, the states of the United States or the nations of Europe. But the main message this book delivers remains a powerful one: it is possible to make equity a central purpose, if not the very definition, of development. That is, perhaps, it's most important contribution.