IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/revinw/v62y2016ips4-s21.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Income Inequality in Latin America: A Factor Component Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Branko Milanovic
  • Verónica Amarante

Abstract

The decline in inequality observed in most Latin American countries after 2002 was surprisingly good news, particularly given that most developed countries were experiencing a rise in inequality at that time. Various arguments have been put forward to explain this decline, but there is still no consensus on the most plausible explanation. This article contributes to the ongoing discussion by performing inequality decompositions by factor components. We estimate the importance of each source of income in explaining the observed decline in income inequality between 2002 and 2011 in five Latin American countries. Specifically, we explore the role of the process of formalization that has taken place in regional labor markets, separating formal and informal wages and considering self‐employment incomes. In the five countries studied here informal wages and self‐employment income contributed to decreasing inequality. Formal sector wages, on the other hand, fostered inequality in all countries except Bolivia.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Branko Milanovic & Verónica Amarante, 2016. "Income Inequality in Latin America: A Factor Component Analysis," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 62, pages 4-21, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:revinw:v:62:y:2016:i::p:s4-s21
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/roiw.12236
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oscar Altimir, 1987. "Income Distribution Statistics In Latin America And Their Reliability," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 33(2), pages 111-155, June.
    2. Frank Cowell & Carlo Fiorio, 2011. "Inequality decompositions—a reconciliation," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(4), pages 509-528, December.
    3. repec:bla:econom:v:62:y:1995:i:245:p:29-63 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Cornia, Giovanni Andrea (ed.), 2014. "Falling Inequality in Latin America: Policy Changes and Lessons," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198701804.
    5. Leonardo Gasparini & Guillero Cruces & Leopoldo Tornarolli, 2011. "Recent Trends In Income Inequality In Latin America," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Spring 20), pages 147-201.
    6. -, 2014. "Compacts for Equality: Towards a Sustainable Future," Libros y Documentos Institucionales, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), number 36693 edited by Eclac.
    7. Giovanni Andrea Cornia, 2010. "Income Distribution under Latin America's New Left Regimes," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(1), pages 85-114.
    8. -, 2014. "Compacts for Equality: Towards a Sustainable Future," Documentos de posición del período de sesiones de la Comisión 36693, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    9. Shorrocks, A F, 1982. "Inequality Decomposition by Factor Components," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 193-211, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jara, H. Xavier & Montesdeoca, Lourdes & Colmenarez, María Gabriela & Moreno, Lorena, 2025. "Two decades of tax-benefit reforms in Ecuador: How much have they contributed to poverty and inequality reduction?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    2. Zagdbazar, Manlaibaatar, 2025. "Inequality Reduction in Mongolia: A Dynamic Income Source Analysis," MPRA Paper 125762, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Diego Winkelried & Bruno Escobar, 2022. "Declining inequality in Latin America? Robustness checks for Peru," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 223-243, March.
    4. Luca Giangregorio & Davide Villani, 2025. "Functional distribution, personal income inequality, and top shares of income: do social classes still matter?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 23(1), pages 143-176, March.
    5. Lahsen, Amina. A & Piper, Alan T., 2018. "Property Rights and Intellectual Property Protection, GDP growth and Well-Being in Latin America," MPRA Paper 90034, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Luca Giangregorio & Davide Villani, 2023. "Income inequality, top shares of income and social classes in the 21st century," Working Papers 646, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    7. Zagdbazar, Manlaibaatar, 2025. "Inequality Reduction in Mongolia: A Dynamic Income Source Analysis," MPRA Paper 125662, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Caroline Krafft & Elizabeth E. Davis, 2021. "The Arab inequality puzzle: the role of income sources in Egypt and Tunisia," Middle East Development Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(1), pages 1-26, January.
    9. De Rosa, Mauricio & Flores, Ignacio & Morgan, Marc, 2024. "More unequal or not as rich? Revisiting the Latin American exception," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    10. Nelson R. Ramírez- Rondán & Marco E. Terrones & Diego Winkelried, 2020. "Equalizing growth: The case of Peru," Working Papers 176, Peruvian Economic Association.
    11. repec:osf:socarx:akq89_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Roberto Mauricio Sánchez-Torres, 2017. "Desigualdad del ingreso en Colombia: un estudio por departamentos," Revista Cuadernos de Economia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, FCE, CID.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alvaredo, Facundo & Bourguignon, François & Ferreira, Francisco H. G. & Lustig, Nora, 2023. "Seventy-five Years of Measuring Income Inequality in Latin America," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 13157, Inter-American Development Bank.
    2. Facundo Alvaredo & François Bourguignon & Francisco Ferreira & Nora Lustig, 2024. "Inequality bands: Seventy-five years of measuring income inequality in latin america," World Inequality Lab Working Papers halshs-04563817, HAL.
    3. Fernández A., Andrés, 2016. "Income inequality in Costa Rica according to the national household income and expenditure surveys of 2004 and 2013," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), August.
    4. Luis Bertola & José Antonio Ocampo, 2022. "The Latin American economy during the first decades of the 21st century," Documentos de trabajo 68, Programa de Historia Económica, FCS, Udelar.
    5. Amarante, Verónica & Galván, Marco & Mancero, Xavier, 2016. "Inequality in Latin America: a global measurement," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), April.
    6. Missbach, Leonard & Steckel, Jan Christoph & Vogt-Schilb, Adrien, 2024. "Cash transfers in the context of carbon pricing reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    7. Mauricio De Rosa, 2018. "Wealth distribution in Uruguay: capitalizing incomes in the dark," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 18-07, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    8. SOLOGON Denisa & VAN KERM Philippe & LI Jinjing & O'DONOGHUE Cathal, 2018. "Accounting for Differences in Income Inequality across Countries: Ireland and the United Kingdom," LISER Working Paper Series 2018-01, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    9. Castillo, Mario & Martins, Antonio, 2016. "Premature deindustrialization in Latin America," Desarrollo Productivo 40241, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    10. Teixidó Figueras, Jordi & Duro Moreno, Juan Antonio, 2012. "Ecological Footprint Inequality: A methodological review and some results," Working Papers 2072/203168, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    11. Villarreal, Francisco G. & Padilla, Ramón & Stezano, Federico, 2020. "Fostering investment of the family remittances in value chains : Case studies in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Guatemala," Documentos de Proyectos 45963, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    12. Carole Bonnet & Dominique Meurs & Benoît Rapoport, 2018. "Gender inequalities in pensions: different components similar levels of dispersion," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 16(4), pages 527-552, December.
    13. 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.
    14. Facundo Alvaredo & Mauricio de Rosa & Ignacio Flores & Marc Morgan, 2022. "The Inequality (or the Growth) we Measure: Data Gaps and the Distribution of Incomes," Working Papers halshs-03693223, HAL.
    15. Stefan Huemer & Beatrice Scheubel & Florian Walch, 2013. "Measuring Institutional Competitiveness in Europe," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 59(3), pages 576-608, September.
    16. Beatriz Muriel Hernández, 2016. "An Analysis of Firm Characteristics as Earnings Determinants: The Urban Bolivia Case," Development Research Working Paper Series 04/2016, Institute for Advanced Development Studies.
    17. -, 2019. "Gender equality plans in Latin America and the Caribbean: Road maps for development," Libros y Documentos Institucionales, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), number 41015 edited by Eclac.
    18. Sologon, Denisa M. & Doorley, Karina & O'Donoghue, Cathal & Peluso, Eugenio, 2024. "The Gendered Nature of the Cost-of-Living Crisis in Europe," IZA Discussion Papers 16820, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Gustavo A. Marrero & Juan C. Palomino & Gabriela Sicilia, 2024. "Inequality of opportunity in educational achievement in Western Europe: contributors and channels," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 22(2), pages 383-410, June.
    20. Mike Brewer & Liam Wren-Lewis, 2016. "Accounting for Changes in Income Inequality: Decomposition Analyses for the UK, 1978–2008," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 78(3), pages 289-322, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:revinw:v:62:y:2016:i::p:s4-s21. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iariwea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.