IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/rp2009-02.html

Globalization and the Role of Public Transfers in Redistributing Income in Latin America and the Caribbean

Author

Listed:
  • Emmanuel Skoufias
  • Kathy Lindert
  • Joseph Shapiro

Abstract

This paper focuses on measuring the extent to which publicly subsidized transfers in Latin America and the Caribbean redistribute income. The redistributive power of 56 transfers in eight countries is measured by their simulated impacts on poverty and inequality, and by their distributional characteristic. Our findings suggest that public transfers can be effective instruments to redistribute income to the poor. Yet frequently they have not managed to do so. The redistributive impacts from social insurance are limited-and even regressive in some countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Emmanuel Skoufias & Kathy Lindert & Joseph Shapiro, 2009. "Globalization and the Role of Public Transfers in Redistributing Income in Latin America and the Caribbean," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2009-02, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:rp2009-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/rp2009-02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:wbk:wbpubs:14902 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. World Bank, 2003. "Poverty in Guatemala," World Bank Publications - Reports 14862, The World Bank Group.
    3. Emmanuel Skoufias & Vincenzo Di Maro, 2008. "Conditional Cash Transfers, Adult Work Incentives, and Poverty," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(7), pages 935-960.
    4. Afonso, Luís Eduardo & Fernandes, Reynaldo, 2005. "Uma Estimativa dos Aspectos Distributivos da Previdência Social no Brasil," Revista Brasileira de Economia - RBE, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil), vol. 59(3), July.
    5. Rofman, Rafael, 2005. "Social security coverage in Latin America," The Social Policy and Labor Discussion Paper Series 32754, The World Bank.
    6. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    7. Skoufias, Emmanuel & Gonzalez-Cossio, Teresa, 2008. "The Impacts of Cash and In-Kind Transfers on Consumption and Labor Supply: Experimental Evidence from Rural Mexico," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4778, The World Bank.
    8. Angus Deaton & Salman Zaidi, 1999. "Guidelines for Constructing Consumption Aggregates For Welfare Analysis," Working Papers 217, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
    9. Angus Deaton & Salman Zaidi, 2002. "Guidelines for Constructing Consumption Aggregates for Welfare Analysis," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 14101, April.
    10. repec:wbk:wbpubs:6582 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. David Coady & Emmanuel Skoufias, 2004. "On the Targeting and Redistributive Efficiencies of Alternative Transfer Instruments," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 50(1), pages 11-27, March.
    12. Emmanuel Skoufias & David P. Coady, 2007. "Are the Welfare Losses from Imperfect Targeting Important?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 74(296), pages 756-776, November.
    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. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Armando Barrientos, 2013. "Politicising poverty in Latin America in the light of Rawls’ ‘strains of commitment’ argument for a social minimum," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 18213, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    3. Andres Irarrazaval, 2022. "The Fiscal Origins of Comparative Inequality levels: An Empirical and Historical Investigation," Working Papers wp531, University of Chile, Department of Economics.
    4. Susana HERRERO-OLARTE & Mateo LOAIZA, 2021. "Structural Or Conjunctural Changes To Reduce Poverty In Ecuador?," Regional and Sectoral Economic Studies, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 21(2), pages 19-36.
    5. Akerkar, Supriya & Joshi, P.C. & Fordham, Maureen, 2016. "Cultures of Entitlement and Social Protection: Evidence from Flood Prone Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 46-58.
    6. Alderman, Harold & Aurino, Elisabetta & Baffour, Priscilla Twumasi & Gelli, Aulo & Turkson, Festus Ebo & Wong, Brad, 2025. "Assessing the overall benefits of programs enhancing human capital and equity: a new method with an application to school meals," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    7. Xabier Garcia-Fuente, 2021. "The Paradox of Redistribution in Time. Social Spending in 53 Countries, 1967-2018," LIS Working papers 815, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    8. Sebastian Sirén, 2024. "Making Growth Inclusive? Do Government Transfers Moderate the Effect of Economic Growth on Absolute and Relative Child Poverty?," LIS Working papers 879, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    9. Armando Barrientos & Dario Debowicz & Ingrid Woolard, 2014. "Antipoverty Transfers and Inclusive Growth in Brazil," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series iriba_wp04, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    10. Armando Barrientos & Stephan Dietrich & Franziska Gassmann & Daniele Malerba, 2022. "Prioritarian rates of return to antipoverty transfers," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(3), pages 550-563, April.

    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. Skoufias, Emmanuel & Lindert, Kathy & Shapiro, Joseph, 2010. "Globalization and the Role of Public Transfers in Redistributing Income in Latin America and the Caribbean," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 895-907, June.
    2. David Coady, 2006. "The Welfare Returns to Finer Targeting: The Case of The Progresa Program in Mexico," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 13(2), pages 217-239, May.
    3. Garcia-Diaz, Rocio & Sosa-Rub, Sandra G., 2011. "Analysis of the distributional impact of out-of-pocket health payments: Evidence from a public health insurance program for the poor in Mexico," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 707-718, July.
    4. Ametoglo, Muriel Eyram Silo & Guo, Ping, 2016. "Inequality, poverty and inclusive growth in TOGO: An Assessment of the Survey Data," MPRA Paper 79705, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. repec:wbk:wbpubs:6582 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Coady, David P., 2001. "An Evaluation Of The Distributional Power Of Progresa'S Cash Transfer In Mexico," FCND Discussion Papers 16428, CGIAR, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    7. Melanie Grosse & Stephan Klasen & Julius Spatz, 2005. "Creating National Poverty Profiles and Growth Incidence Curves with Incomplete Income or Consumption Expenditure Data: An Application to Bolivia," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 129, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.
    8. John A. Maluccio, 2009. "Household targeting in practice: The Nicaraguan Red de Protección Social," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(1), pages 1-23.
    9. Pape, Utz & Verme, Paolo, 2023. "Measuring Poverty in Forced Displacement Contexts," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1245, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    10. Akanksha Srivastava & Sanjay Mohanty, 2012. "Poverty Among Elderly in India," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 493-514, December.
    11. Hidrobo, Melissa & Hoddinott, John & Peterman, Amber & Margolies, Amy & Moreira, Vanessa, 2014. "Cash, food, or vouchers? Evidence from a randomized experiment in northern Ecuador," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 144-156.
    12. Nanak Kakwani & Marcelo Neri & Hyun H. Son, 2006. "Linkages between Pro-Poor Growth, Social Programmes and Labour Market: The Recent Brazilian Experience," Working Papers 26, International Policy Centre.
    13. Nguyen, Minh Cong & Winters, Paul, 2011. "The impact of migration on food consumption patterns: The case of Vietnam," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 71-87, February.
    14. Peter Davis & Bob Baulch, 2010. "Casting the net wide and deep: lessons learned in a mixed-methods study of poverty dynamics in rural Bangladesh," Working Papers id:2674, eSocialSciences.
    15. Beaman, Lori & Dillon, Andrew, 2012. "Do household definitions matter in survey design? Results from a randomized survey experiment in Mali," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 124-135.
    16. Klasen, Stephan & Reimers, Malte, 2017. "Looking at Pro-Poor Growth from an Agricultural Perspective," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 147-168.
    17. Clementi, Fabio & Molini, Vasco & Schettino, Francesco, 2018. "All that Glitters is not Gold: Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 275-291.
    18. Leonardo Gasparini, 2006. "Assessing benefit-incidence results using decompositions. The case of health policy in Argentina," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(40), pages 1-10.
    19. Anna D'Souza & Dean Jolliffe, 2012. "Rising Food Prices and Coping Strategies: Household-level Evidence from Afghanistan," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(2), pages 282-299, August.
    20. Michael Lokshin & Nithin Umapathi & Stefano Paternostro, 2006. "Robustness of subjective welfare analysis in a poor developing country: Madagascar 2001," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(4), pages 559-591.
    21. Sami Bibi & Mustapha K. Nabli, 2009. "Income Inequality In The Arab Region: Data And Measurement, Patterns And Trends," Middle East Development Journal (MEDJ), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(02), pages 275-314.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:unu:wpaper:rp2009-02. 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: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.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.