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Inequality and Poverty under Latin America's New Left Regimes

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  • Darryl McLeod

    (Fordham University, Department of Economics)

  • Nora Lustig

    (Tulane University, Department of Economics)

Abstract

During the last decade, inequality and poverty fell sharply in many Latin American countries; a period in which voters chose left-leaning leaders in ten countries including about half the region's population. Are these two developments related? Using data for 18 Latin American countries and political regime classification of Arnson and Perales (2007), this paper presents some econometric evidence that the social democratic regimes in Brazil, Chile and to a lesser extent Uruguay were more successful at reducing inequality and poverty than the so-called left populist regimes of Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela. Both groups implemented policies to redistribute income, but the social democratic regimes redistributive efforts were more effective. Argentina and Venezuela started the 1990-2008 sample window with lower levels of inequality, so to some extent recent reductions in inequality are a return to "normal" levels (as estimated by fixed effects). Inequality and poverty in Brazil and Chile, on the other hand, fell to historic lows during this period. Second, overall terms of trade shocks were more favorable for Argentina and Venezuela, so part of the drop in inequality in those countries can be attributed to typically transient commodity price booms.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Fordham University, Department of Economics in its series Fordham Economics Discussion Paper Series with number dp2010-13.

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Date of creation: 2010
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Handle: RePEc:frd:wpaper:dp2010-13

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  1. Leonardo Gasparini & Guillermo Cruces & Leopoldo Tornarolli, 2009. "Recent trends in income inequality in Latin America," Working Papers 132, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
  2. Paul Collier & Benedikt Goderis, 2007. "Commodity Prices, Growth, and the Natural Resource Curse: Reconciling a Conundrum," CSAE Working Paper Series 2007-15, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
  3. Daron Acemoglu & Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin, 2011. "A Political Theory of Populism," Levine's Working Paper Archive 661465000000001179, David K. Levine.
  4. Paul Collier & Benedikt Goderis, 2008. "Commodity Prices and Growth: An empirical investigation," OxCarre Working Papers 014, Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, University of Oxford.
  5. Giovanni Andrea cornia, 2009. "Income Distribution under Latin America’s New Left Regimes," Working Papers Series wp2009_16.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Economia e Dell'Impresa.
  6. Maxim Pinkovskiy & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2009. "Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of Income," NBER Working Papers 15433, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. Lustig, N. & Mcleod, D., 1996. "Minimum Wages and Poverty in Developing Countries : Some Empirical Evidence," Papers 125, Brookings Institution - Working Papers.
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  1. Inequality and Poverty under Latin America’s New Left Regimes
    by maximorossi in NEP-LTV blog on 2011-02-21 12:20:36
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Cited by:
  1. Nancy Birdsall & Nora Lustig & Darryl McLeod, 2011. "Declining inequality in Latin America: Some economics, some politics," Working Papers 201, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.

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