CEPAL Review - Volume 2021, Issue 134, 2022

This article assesses the impact of conditional cash transfers, social pensions and other non-contributory transfers on different indicators of poverty and extreme poverty in Latin America, based on an analysis of household surveys from 15 countries in the region between 2014 and 2017. It is found that in 2017, the combined effect of non-contributory social protection programmes reduced simple regional averages for poverty by 2.0 percentage points and for extreme poverty by 1.7 percentage points, equivalent to relative decreases of 11.8% and 25.9%, respectively. It is also observed that surveys tend to capture fewer recipients of non-contributory transfers than administrative records. This undercapturing, as calculated for Brazil, may lead to underestimation of the impact of programmes, especially on indicators of severity and depth of poverty.

This study aims to provide an approach to concepts and ways of measuring ethnicity and social exclusion that can be generalized to any context and time and, thus, make it possible to establish a statistically significant relation between these two categories. The methodology involves fuzzy sets and ordinary least squares regression, using data obtained from the Colombian National Quality of Life Survey for 2012–2017. At the 95% confidence level, it is concluded that when ethnicity increases by 1 percentage point, the degree of social exclusion in the country rises by 7 points. Other characteristics, such as having a darker skin tone, self-identifying with an ethnic group, being an immigrant and living in rural areas, produce similar effects.

According to official data (based on the income poverty line), 20% of households in Costa Rica were poor in 1994, a figure that has apparently not changed substantially since. The poverty level is currently considered to have stagnated at around 20% for more than two decades. However, the way poverty is measured has undergone methodological changes that preclude a strict comparison of the data over time. This study offers a method for dealing with the methodological difficulties and obtaining a set of comparable poverty data for the period from 1987 to 2017. It thereby demonstrates that the level of poverty in Costa Rica changed little between 1994 and 2006, but declined from the latter year onward.

The standard social discount rate of 12% applied by planning institutions and multilateral agencies when evaluating public projects is a constant administrative parameter that is unsupported and unresponsive to changes in social preferences over time. This paper presents an alternative way of determining the social discount rate based on the gamma estimation model (Weitzman, 2001) in a developing-country context, which has three advantages: (i) it incorporates decreasing discounting, (ii) it is cost-efficient in that it sums up the various expert opinions and (iii) it adjusts for changes in short- and long-term preferences. Our estimates are lower than the standard nominal rate for different time periods, ranging from 2% for evaluation horizons longer than 51 years to 11% for the short term (0–5 years).

This paper discusses different growth trajectories in a selection of Latin American economies, namely Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, comparing the phase of import substitution growth strategies with the more recent period of financial integration into the world economy. Our working hypothesis is that different growth trajectories result from the linkages between macroeconomic conditions and changes in production structures. When policy space becomes narrower, long-term growth performance is impaired and structural change will not usually enhance growth potential. We carry out an analysis based on the framework space methodology, which serves to compare phases of growth described as an evolving coupling of the dynamic profile of productivity growth (a supply-side condition) with the behaviour of capital accumulation (a demand-side condition). In light of the framework space comparative analysis, our main conclusion is that economic opening in the 1990s did nothing to further the catching-up process in any of the four economies.

This article assesses the importance of using the Grubel-Lloyd (GL) index as a tool to reveal trends in foreign direct investment (FDI). The index was developed to further the study of a fundamental question in international political economy: how FDI affects economies, whether individual or regional, and becomes a general framework indicator of regional behaviour. The index is applied to the four largest economies in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) in the period 1995–2016, with a view to demonstrating the importance of FDI for the region. However, the “behaviour” of FDI may be different for each country. The article discusses characteristics in each of these countries that differ from those found in the same indicator for a bloc consisting of the developed countries plus China, for which the index as calculated is higher and varies little during the period analysed.

The sensitivity of unemployment to economic activity in the Mexican States (from the beginning of 2004 to the first half of 2018) was evaluated on the basis of Okun’s law (1983) as it relates to growth rates. To capture the heterogeneity of the 32 States, the results of individual regressions were compared with fixed effects panel data estimates. The Okun coefficient is significant and possesses the correct sign in 22 States, reflecting a variation between -7.21 and -1.25. The remaining 10 States (with the incorrect sign and an insignificant coefficient) are characterized by poor economic, social and institutional performances. The great recession brought about structural changes in 15 of the 22 States where Okun’s law is valid throughout the period. Moreover, in these 22 States, the Rule of Law Index and the rate of critical employment conditions determine the sensitivity of unemployment growth to output growth.

This article considers certain dimensions of the quality of employment in Brazil, particularly in rural zones. It starts from the perception of changes in rural production relations and the repercussions these have on employment practices. A panel data methodology is applied to capture the determinants of job quality, and a quality of employment index is proposed. Rural employment is more precarious than its urban counterpart, although the differences have been diminishing over time. In the agriculture sector, the economic growth of the 2000 decade merely resulted in the existing conditions of employment being extended to new contracts, without any change in average quality. Rising labour income and education levels are important not only for enhancing the quality of employment but also as a strategy for overcoming problems such as heterogeneity between groups.

The economic globalization that began in the late 1970s and early 1980s has generated job insecurity for workers. This coincides with two trends: a reduction in the wage share of income and increasingly precarious employment, both of which have been seen in most market economies since the early 1980s. This article proposes an efficiency-wage model in a demand-constrained equilibrium scenario, to explain how rising job insecurity has reduced the wage share of income and made employment more precarious. An additional virtue of this model is that it explains several features of the Mexican labour market observed in recent decades.

This paper seeks to determine the leading sectors of the economy of the North-East region of Brazil based on input-output matrix methodology and the economic structure of 2011. For that purpose, the regional input-output matrix was updated from 2004 to 2011 and, subsequently, the Rasmussen-Hirschman linkage indices, field of influence and pure linkage indices were calculated, along with the type I and II multipliers of production, employment and income. The results confirm the importance of the textile and chemical sectors, along with those related to the oil industry, and show that the production of intermediate goods is one of the characteristics of the North-East region’s economy.