Persistent Poverty and Excess Inequality: Latin America, 1970–1995

Abstract

This work assesses the changes in aggregate poverty and inequality that have taken place in Latin America during the past 26 years. With this objective, we put together the largest number of observations on income distribution for the region for the period 1970–1995. We find that poverty and inequality have not declined during the 1990s in spite of improvements at the macroeconomic level. The characteristics of our data allow us to perform various comparisons between countries. Our results show that even though there are differences in levels across countries, inequality and poverty in most of them follow similar trends during the period under study.