Do We Know How Much Poverty There is?

This paper tests the sensitivity of poverty indexes to the choice of adult equivalence scales, assumptions about the existence of economies of scale in consumption, methods for treating missing and zero incomes, and different adjustments to handle income misreporting. We also perform sensitivity analysis to the use of different poverty lines and poverty indexes, which are issues that have been much more explored in the literature. The sensitivity analysis is applied to household survey data from 17 Latin American countries, which include 92% of the population in the region. By varying these parameters within reasonable boundaries, we find that the proportion of poor could be said to be either 12. 7 percent or 65. 8 percent of the total population. Additionally, the ranking of countries with respect to poverty is also highly sensitive. This points to the need of justifying and being explicit about the underlying choices and definitions behind poverty statistics, and to the need of performing sensitivity analysis illustrating the menu of options that can answer the question of how much poverty there is

Human Capital Policies: What They Can and Cannot Do for Productivity and Poverty Reduction in Latin America

Raising labor productivity is recognized as a critical factor for increasing economic growth and reducing poverty levels in Latin America. Low levels of education continue to be singled out as the main obstacle to higher productivity in the region. We examine the scope for education to lift labor incomes above poverty levels in Latin America and find that in many countries education, by itself, has a positive, but limited, potential to increase wages above a minimum level. In general, the prospects are dim because progress in raising average schooling levels has been slow even under the best historical scenarios. We also examine whether the apparent failure of education can be explained by low wage returns to schooling, and poor underlying conditions. We find that investments in education continue to have important payoffs but poor underlying conditions explain the modest prospect for the role of education in the short run. This leads us to consider what additional policies should be pursued in order to ensure higher productivity for workers in the region

Understanding Domestic Saving in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Case of Mexico

This study addresses why Mexico continues to show below-average economic growth rates in spite of displaying systematically higher domestic savings than other countries in the region. Using the wealth of relevant databases available for the country, the paper finds that a possible explanation is that household savings account for a majority of domestic savings, and that the main instrument used for savings is durable goods, which implies that savings are not directly injected into the financial system for fueling productive investment. The construction of a synthetic panel from household survey data shows that household savings in Mexico have a clear age-increasing trend and have been growing across generations during the past 30 years; it is thus probable that rates will increase in years to come. However, if those savings continue to elude the financial system, their influence on economic growth may remain limited

Does a Mature Aids Epidemic Threaten Growth?

This paper models the impact on economic growth of HIV/AIDS when the epidemic is in a mature phase, in contrast with previous studies focused on periods of expansion, as in African countries. Simulations for Honduras, the epicenter of the epidemic in Central America, show that AIDS is not likely to threaten economic growth through either labor or capital accumulation channels; impacts are estimated between 0.007 and 0.27 percent points of GDP growth annually for the period 2001-10. Likewise, increasing spending on prevention, public treatment subsidies and treatment access will not jeopardize economic growth prospects. Critical factors that slash economic growth in Africa (such as human capital reductions and shifts in relative skills) are not strong in Honduras

What's Behind the Inequality We Measure: An Investigation Using Latin American Data

The use of income distribution indicators in the economics literature has increased considerably in recent years. This work relies on household surveys from 18 LAC countries to take a step back from the use of these indicators, and explore what`s behind the numbers, and what information they convey. We find: a) that the way countries rank according to inequality measured in a conventional way is to a large extent an illusion created by differences in characteristics of the data and on the particular ways in which the data is treated; b) Our ideas about the effect of inequality on economic growth are also driven by quality and coverage differences in household surveys and by the way in which the data is treated; c) Standard household surveys in LAC are unable to capture the incomes of the richest sectors of society; so, the inequality we are able to measure is most likely a gross underestimation. Our main conclusion is that there is an important story behind each number. This story influences our judgement about how unequal countries are and about the relation between inequality and other development indicators, but it is seldom told or known. Perhaps other statistics commonly used in economics also have their own interesting story, and it might be worth trying to find out what it is

The 1990s in Latin America: Another Decade of Persistent Inequality, But with Somewhat Lower Poverty

This paper processes 76 household surveys from 17 Latin American countries to document changes in poverty and inequality during the 1990s. We show that there is no country in Latin America where inequality declined during the 1990s. Poverty declined in 10 or 11 of the 17 countries for which household surveys are available to us, depending on the poverty measured used. Persistently high inequality inhibited further poverty reduction