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Human development and inequality in the 20th Century : the Mercosur countries in a comparative perspective

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  • Luis Bertola

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  • Maria Camou
  • Silvana Maubrigades
  • Natalia Melgar
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    Abstract

    This article is in line with the United Nations attempts to approach human development in wider terms than per capita GDP, and in line with an ever lively debate on the historical standard of living and on the role of inequality in development. We focus on three Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay) and we view them in comparison with four core countries (France, Germany, USA and UK) along the 20th Century. The paper makes different attempts to construct diverse indices and to change the weights of their different components in order to better explain human development in different periods. A contribution of the paper, so long limited to Uruguay and the USA, is to adjust the historical human development index by inequality measures for all of its components. The results show that Argentine started to diverge, even in human development, at early stages of the 20th Century; that Uruguay diverged from the mid-century and that Brazil continued to tighten the gap up to 1980, diverging afterwards without being able to come close to the levels of the core countries. Total inequality in Uruguay and USA showed similar levels and trends: it decreased until the 1950s, and increased afterwards to similar levels. While inequality affects human development within both countries, it doesn’t help to understand the differences between them, due to the mentioned similarity of the Gini-coefficients.

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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Universidad Carlos III, Departamento de Historia Económica e Instituciones in its series Working Papers in Economic History with number wp08-06.

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    Date of creation: Apr 2008
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    Handle: RePEc:cte:whrepe:wp08-06

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    Related research

    Keywords: Human development; Education; Life expectancy; Inequality; Catching-up; Domestic capabilities;

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    1. Edwards, Sebastian, 2007. "Crises and Growth: A Latin American Perspective," Revista de Historia Económica, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(01), pages 19-51, January.
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    8. Prados de la Escosura, Leandro, . "When did Latin America fall behind? : evidence from long-run international inequality," Open Access publications from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid info:hdl:10016/413, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
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    12. Bértola, Luis & Porcile, Gabriel, 2006. "Convergence, trade and industrial policy: Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay in the international economy, 1900–1980," Revista de Historia Económica, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(01), pages 37-67, January.
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