Economic Polarisation in Latin America and the Caribbean: What do Household Surveys Tell Us?

Leonardo Gasparini, Matias Horenstein and Sergio Olivieri

CEDLAS, Working Papers from CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata

Abstract: This document presents and discusses an extensive set of statistics aimed at characterizing the degree of economic polarisation in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. The study is based on a dataset of household surveys from 21 LAC countries in the period 1989-2004. Latin America is characterised by a high level of economic polarisation, compared to other regions in the world. On average, income polarisation has mildly increased in the region since the early 1990s. The country experiences in terms of income polarisation, however, have been heterogeneous. The region has moved forward toward the reduction of educational inequalities, while the gaps between the rich and the poor in terms of access to basic services (water and electricity) have been reduced.

Keywords: polarisation; cohesion; inequality; Latin America; Caribbean (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D3 D6 I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 125 pages
Date: 2006-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-lam
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/archivos_upload/doc_cedlas38.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dls:wpaper:0038

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEDLAS, Working Papers from CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ana Pacheco ().