CEPAL Review - Volume 2000, Issue 72, 2000

The objective of this paper is to explore the effects of globalization on the labour market and social stratification. It is generally held that globalization will bring about progress for nations and people. This, however, is far from clear, since the experience of almost two decades has been raising increasing doubts about the potential net gains and, particularly, the distribution of such gains. Clearly, there are winners and losers among both countries and people. We will concentrate on the effects upon people within countries and refer only to one region: Latin America. Our aim is to identify winners and losers in the globalization process and, particularly, the impact on social stratification. Is globalization leading towards greater social integration within nations, or is social disintegration the result (because only some groups are being integrated, while a majority is progressively excluded)? To analyse this issue, the paper is structured into four parts. The first looks at globalization as an integral part of a policy compact, since it is necessary to consider the impact of the whole package rather than trying to isolate partial effects. The second concentrates on the effects on employment, incomes and equity. The third explores changes in the social structure associated with some of the main processes accompanying globalization. Lastly, we draw some conclusions about the social structure of Latin America during the reform period.

The economic reforms applied in the region during the 1980s and 1990s created expectations, for which there was theoretical justification, of strong job creation and greater equity in the labour market. This article analyses developments in the quantity and characteristics of employment during the 1990s. It concludes that today’s labour market problems are due to insufficient economic growth and to less intensive use of labour, resulting mainly from changes in tradable goods-producing activities. Modernization of production methods in companies and sectoral restructuring that increased the weight of tertiary activities contributed to segmentation of the labour market on the basis of people’s level of education, as the demand for labour shifted towards those who had passed through intermediate and higher education. People with less formal education had less access to wage employment and wage differences between skilled and unskilled workers widened. At the same time, wage differences between microenterprises and larger ones increased and, with employment relationships becoming more flexible as well, employment quality indicators tended to worsen. All these tendencies were contrary to what had been expected from the reforms. Sectoral restructuring of employment helped trigger a trend towards increasing heterogeneity in the labour market, and this took a variety of forms: substantial and simultaneous job creation at the top and bottom of the employment structure, a widening of the gap between formal and informal activities, differentiation of working conditions within medium-sized and large firms, and internal differentiation among microenterprises and own-account workers.

This article analyses the behaviour of the Colombian labour market and the changes it underwent during the 1990s. It begins by outlining the reforms carried out in that country and summarizing macroeconomic developments and changes in the production structure in the 1990s. Then it uses data available from household surveys to analyse the dynamic of the labour market by economic sector, educational level and occupational position. After briefly describing the latest advances in research into income distribution in Colombia, it then shows the results of simulation exercises carried out to determine the effects of the changes observed in labour market conditions (sectoral structure of employment, relative wages, unemployment and labour force participation) on income distribution and poverty, both for the country as a whole and for the urban and rural sectors separately. The article concludes that the ability of the economy to generate employment has deteriorated markedly, and that this deterioration has affected lower-skilled workers most of all.

From the early decades of the twentieth century onward, the level of equity achieved in Uruguay, and the sophistication of its social welfare institutions, set the country apart from the rest of Latin America. In the second half of the century, this heritage of democracy and equity survived the severe tests to which it was subjected without fracturing too badly. The strength of the country’s sociocultural foundations was convincingly demonstrated after the restoration of democracy in 1985, when Uruguay succeeded in maintaining the position it had traditionally held as the regional leader in social development, this leadership being manifested at this time in the country’s indices of poverty and inequality as measured by income distribution, which were low by the standards of other Latin American nations. The authors contend that in the last fifteen years of the twentieth century, Uruguay succeeded in coping with these challenges by maintaining a good balance between the political, social and economic aspects of development. They analyse the subject by placing the position of Uruguay in a Latin American context. Using the same type of indicators, they then describe how the country evolved in the closing fifteen years of the twentieth century, after which they discuss some of the most important processes underlying these trends in the market, in households and in the State. Lastly, they offer some reflections on the main challenges that the country will have to address if it is to retain or improve the level of national integration already achieved, on a basis of equity.

Since 1988 the ejido sector in Mexico has been buffeted by a series of policy changes and exogenous shocks that have brought into question the agricultural viability of the sector as a whole. These changes –trade liberalization, privatization, falling subsidies, the abolition of price controls, macroeconomic shocks, devaluation and momentous changes in the legal framework governing land use in the ejido– have led to a radical reordering of the policy framework and incentive structure under which the farmers of these communal lands operate. The cumulative effect of these reforms has theoretically been to give ejido producers the freedom and flexibility to adjust to changes in the incentive structure and emerge as viable, competitive producers in an increasingly globalized economy. Unfortunately, the hoped-for benefits first of sectoral reform, then of macroeconomic reform, have not materialized. The author provides a brief history of the ejido sector and the Salinas/Zedillo reforms. He then discusses in broad terms the responses that ejidatarios have made to these neoliberal reforms and the subsequent macroeconomic crisis. This is followed by a detailed look at the different components of this changing situation: land accumulation, risk-averse agriculture, scarcity of credit, livestock accumulation, diversification into off-farm activities and income structure. The principal tools of analysis are categorization of households on the basis of changes in these different components and comparison of the characteristics and asset positions of households engaged in different response strategies. The article concludes by analysing the consequences of these response strategies for State development policy in the rural sector in Mexico.

Most educational investment is based on untested or partially tested assumptions about the cost-effectiveness of a given course of action. Indeed, the only estimates that have been available have been for the average profitability of each type of education, even though these differ greatly from marginal profitability. This article sets out a new approach to estimating the cost-effectiveness of educational investment. The authors canvassed the views of ten world-renowned educational researchers on the likely impact on students’ learning achievements of a set of forty measures generally regarded as desirable for improving primary education, and supplemented the responses received with their own calculations of the cost of each, the aim being to establish an index of cost-effectiveness. On this basis, they concluded that the educational projects implemented in the region have failed to include many of the measures identified as the most efficient, and this has limited the quality of the education provided and its potential contribution to economic success, despite the considerable increase in educational investment by governments and international bodies in the 1990s. The article concludes with a number of recommendations aimed at remedying this situation, which take account simultaneously of the impact and the cost of the different educational measures.

A great deal of effort has been put into education reform in Latin America since the early 1990s. Extending the coverage of educational opportunities and improving the quality of the education delivered in schools are crucial for the countries of the region, where education in State schools has often been of a low standard. It is not enough just to study macro education policies as they are formulated by governments and implemented by centralized ministries of education. What is promised or envisioned on paper is often quite different from what actually happens in school establishments. It is important to understand, at the micro level, how schools are functioning in practice as they implement educational policies. Educational policies and social reality come together in school classrooms and schools can teach us a great deal about achieving quality in basic education. The focus of this article is on poor children in poor schools and the continuing challenges of educating children in poor communities. Chile’s national programme to improve the quality of education and educational outcomes in 900 of its poorer primary schools, known as the P900 programme, provided an ideal framework for identifying and studying the challenges faced by schools in poor communities in trying to deliver a high-quality education to their children and for understanding how and why they are struggling to meet national standards. This study is concerned with learning from schools to achieve a better understanding of what they see, in the context of their community and the student population they serve, as the practical realities of educating poor children. At the national level, a macro research methodology was used to identify the worst-performing schools in the P900 programme on the basis of their results in standardized examinations and the trends seen in these results over the 1990s. A small purposive sample of the worstperforming schools was drawn from this group and quota sampling techniques were used to ascertain their main characteristics. A micro study of each of the schools selected was then carried out, involving school visits and interviews to understand school and pupil performance and to identify critical factors that might be amenable to change. In-depth reports were prepared on each school. This article synthesizes the lessons learned from these micro studies.

The static effects of trade creation or diversion are generally held to be the essential variable for evaluating the costs and benefits of regional integration. However, it is the effects of a dynamic nature that provide the most convincing arguments in favour of integrating economies rather than opening them up unilaterally. The difficulties involved in measuring these effects make it necessary to isolate aspects that can provide a basis for analysing the changes undergone by the different production sectors and the consequences of these for the levels and types of industrial organization, business strategies, technological modernization and the regional dynamic, among other things. The footwear sector is very useful when it comes to analysing the effects of subregional integration, as it is a sector that displays rising trade flows within and outside the area, with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) playing an important role. It forms part of a larger production chain, and its competitiveness depends on systemic factors.