Income inequality fell in most of Latin America in the 2000s after rising in the 1990s. In this paper, Nora Lustig, Luis Lopez-Calva, and Eduardo Ortis-Juarez investigate why.
This course aims to develop a broad understanding of the dynamics of inequality and poverty in Latin America and how market forces and government policies affect those dynamics.
In this paper, Nancy Birdsall sets out basic information on the growing middle class in Latin America and the Caribbean and provides grounds for optimism that such expansion might reinforce the inclusive politics that sustain broadly shared growth.
In this report, senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez and José Luis Guasch, senior regional advisor on regulation and competition at the World Bank, investigate what donors can do to help Central America secure sustained growth, alleviate poverty, and reduce inequality, and what the role is for the private sector. They focus their recommendations on five areas in which policy changes can make Central American economies more competitive.
This paper conducts a detailed calculation of capital held by the banks in four Latin American countries—known as the Andean countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru—and assesses the potential effects of full compliance with the capital requirements under Basel III.
Vijaya Ramachandran and Julie Walz propose changes to the business of aid to Haiti to help develop the capacity of the government there.
This data set categorizes 980 nongovernmental and civil-society organizations operating in Haiti and includes information on sector, budget, location, year founded, number of employees, location of headquarters, and type of organization (when available).
This paper identifies the factors at both the country and the bank levels that contributed to the behavior of real credit growth in Latin America during the global financial crisis.
The United States should take modest steps to create a legal channel for limited numbers of people fleeing natural disasters overseas to enter the United States. This would address two related problems: the lack of any systematic U.S. policy to help the growing numbers of people displaced across borders by natural disasters and the inability of U.S. humanitarian relief efforts to reduce systemic poverty or sustainably improve victims’ livelihoods. The aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake presents a compelling case study of the administrative and legislative ways the U.S. government could address both problems. Migration is already a proven and powerful force for reducing Haitians’ poverty. A few modest changes in the U.S. approach could greatly aid Haiti’s recovery.
Mexico’s Progresa/Oportunidades conditional cash transfers program (CCT) is constantly used as a model of a successful antipoverty program. This paper argues that the transformation of well-trained scholars into influential practitioners played a fundamental role in promoting a new conceptual approach to poverty reduction.
This paper explores the legal means by which victims of natural disasters could qualify as refugees and thus benefit from the power of migration as a tool for disaster recovery.
This policy brief explores the various legal channels through which the U.S. government could leverage the power of migration to help provide disaster relief.
New research shows that inequality in Latin America is falling. In this paper, the authors summarize recent findings, analyze the affect of different regimes, and investigate the relationship between inequality and changes in the size of the middle class in the region. They conclude with some questions about whether and how changes in income distribution and in middle-class economic power will affect the politics of distribution in the future.
Debt crises in Europe, sluggish growth in the United States, and an overvalued Chinese currency could all spell trouble for developing countries. CGD senior fellow Liliana Rojas-Suarez unpacks three big financial-sector risks for 2011.
In this working paper, the authors introduce an MDG Progress Index to assess how on or off track countries are toward MDG targets.
Andrew Natsios testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about supporting Haiti's rebuilding process
David Roodman testifies before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade about supporting Haiti's private sector
Nancy Birdsall testifies before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade on rebuilding Haiti's competitiveness and private sector. March 16, 2010.