Gender gaps in labor force participation in developing countries persist despite income growth or structural change. We assess this persistence across economic geographies within countries, focusing on youth employment in off-farm wage jobs. We...
This paper studies the incidence and heterogeneity of labour informality in six Latin American countries—Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru. We divide workers into five work statuses: formal wage-employed, formal self-employed...
Gender gaps in labour force participation in developing countries persist despite income growth or structural change. We assess this persistence across economic geographies within countries, focusing on youth employment in off-farm wage jobs. We...
We study the causal effect of motherhood on labour market outcomes in Latin America by adopting an event study approach around the birth of the first child based on panel data from national household surveys for Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay.Our...
Latin America has seen vast improvements in gender educational and health equality. Favourable supply-side conditions, however, have not translated into greater gender economic equality, a process that also depends on structural economic change and...
This note introduces the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database (ETD), which provides time series of employment and real and nominal value added by 12 sectors in 51 countries for the period 1990–2018. The ETD includes 20 Asian, 9 Latin...
Part of Journal Special Issue Fiscal state capacity
How would progressive income taxation affect income inequality in Bolivia? What are the costs and benefits of implementing a state pension in Colombia...
This paper examines Chile Solidario, a social protection programme that provides poor households in Chile with preferential access to a conditional cash transfer programme designed to facilitate investments in children’s health and education. We...
Part of Journal Special Issue Fiscal Policy, State Building and Economic Development
Access to effective social insurance in Latin America is typically determined by workers’ status in the labor market – whether they have formal or...
We study the labour market dynamics of men and women in El Salvador and Nicaragua, focusing on the factors that help men and women move into an advantageous labour market state from an unfavourable state. We consider ‘advantageous’ states to be...
Part of Journal Special Issue Welfare and distributive effects of social assistance in the Global South
This paper combines cross-national statistical analysis and in-depth historical case studies of Argentina and Chile to explore the relationship between two crucial dimensions of state capacity.We show that information capacity contributes to the...
The COVID-19 pandemic drastically affected household incomes around the world. In developed economies, pre-pandemic tax–benefit policies and emergency transfers mitigated to a large extent the negative income shock. However, less is known about the...
Part of Book The Job Ladder
Part of Book The Job Ladder
Part of Journal Special Issue Women’s Work
How strong is the transmission of socio-economic status across generations in Latin America? To answer this question, we first review the empirical literature on intergenerational mobility and inequality of opportunity for the region, summarizing...
This study is part of a series of ten country-focused desk studies on aid and democracy prepared under the project The state and statebuilding in the Global South. They are prepared under the guidance of Rachel M. Gisselquist as background to a...
One key element in the reduction of poverty and (in Latin America) inequality has been the achievement of greater fiscal equity; we analyse one key part of this process, which is the earmarking of portions of tax revenue to be spent on progressive...
In this paper, we present comparative evidence for eight Latin American countries regarding design and effects of cash transfers (CTs). On the basis of household survey data, we analyse their coverage, importance in household income, and effects on...
Join the network
