Poverty and Income Distribution in Latin America

October, Saturday 29th | 11-13hs

Contributed Session CS40

Room 34

 
Chair: Kathy Lindert, The World Bank
 
 

 

 Conditional Transfers, Labor Supply and Poverty: Microsimulating Oportunidades

 

  

 

Session: Poverty and Income Distribution in Latin America

 

  

Presenter

 Samuel Freije, Universidad de las Américas, México

 

  

Author(s)

Samuel Freije, Universidad de las Américas, México

Rosangela Bando, Universidad de las Américas, México

Fernanda Arce, Secretaria de Desarrollo Social, México

 

  

 

 

This article summarizes a microsimulation exercise for the Mexican program Oportunidades. Two questions are answered: What would happen to poverty if the program were cancelled? And how much poverty reductions cost? Oportunidades can be associated with up to a third of the reduction in rural poverty. Further reductions of poverty have different costs depending on whether aimed to reduce poverty gap or to expand coverage. Labor supply is not affected by current cash transfers.

 

 

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 Redistributing Income to the Poor and the Rich: Public Transfers in Latin America and the Caribbean

 

  

 

Session: Poverty and Income Distribution in Latin America

 

  

Presenter

 Kathy Lindert, The World Bank

 

  

Author(s)

Kathy Lindert, The World Bank

Emmanuel Skoufias, The World Bank

Joseph Shapiro, The World Bank

 

  

 

 

We measure the extent to which public transfers in LAC redistribute income. Current allocations do not favor redistributive potential in LAC. Significant savings and welfare gains could be incurred by improving the targeting of social insurance– which is traditionally linked formal labor market membership – and by reallocating spending towards social assistance schemes, such as cash transfers. Such a reallocation help “untruncate” the welfare state in LAC.

 

 

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 Changes in Poverty and the Stability of Income Distribution in Argentina: Evidence from the 1990s Via Decompositions

 

  

 

Session: Poverty and Income Distribution in Latin America

 

  

Presenter

 Florencia Lopez Boo, University of Oxford

 

  

Author(s)

Florencia Lopez Boo, University of Oxford

 

  

 

 

Despite economic growth in the 1990s, Argentina experienced increased inequality and poverty. By an axiom-modified Datt-Ravallion (DR) decomposition separating poverty into mean-inequality components, I will show how each has contributed to poverty changes. Contrary to claims of a new literature, inequality is not stable in Argentina. Results are extended:first the empirical density function is used to compute inequality; second,components are computed without the vaguely defined DR residual.

 

 

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 Making the Poor Haitians Count Takes More Than Counting the Poor--Poverty and Labor Market Assessment Based on the First Household Survey for Haiti

 

  

 

Session: Poverty and Income Distribution in Latin America

 

  

Presenter

 Dorte Verner, The World Bank

 

  

Author(s)

Dorte Verner, The World Bank

 

  

 

 

Half of households live in absolute poverty; 20, 56 and 58% in metropolitan, urban and rural areas. Living in rural areas does not by itself affect the probability of being poor but migration does. Poverty is not strictly an agricultural problem but a question of education attainment. Education, gender, location and migration are key in explaining nonfarm employment and wages. Farm incomes increase with farm size, title, and access to tools, electricity, road, irrigation and other inputs.

 

 

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 Dealing with Natural Disasters: Public and Private Responses. Household Evidence from Nicaragua.

 

  

 

Session: Poverty and Income Distribution in Latin America

 

  

Presenter

 Carmen Lazo, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

 

  

Author(s)

Carmen Lazo, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Indhira Santos, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

 

  

Sponsor

 The Tinker Foundation Scholarship

 

  

 

 

This paper uses panel household data from Nicaragua to analyze whether public transfers crowd out private transfers; and the efficiency in the provision of aid following the hurricane Mitch. We find that conditional on receiving private transfers, there is no evidence of crowding out. In addition, our results indicate that the amount of transfers received by the households in the aftermath of the hurricane was neither related to the degree of damage suffered nor to their incomes

 

 

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 Can Conditional Cash Transfers Serve as Safety Sets to Keep Children at School and Out of the Labor Market?

 

  

 

Session: Schooling Dropout

 

  

Presenter

 Alain de Janvry, University of California at Berkeley

 

  

Author(s)

Alain de Janvry, University of California at Berkeley

Frederico Finan, University of California at Berkeley

Elisabeth Sadoulet, University of California at Berkeley

Renos Vakis, The World Bank

 

  

 

 

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs for education are known to be effective in increasing educational achievements among the rural poor. Using panel data from the Progresa experience, we show that shocks push parents to take children out of school and to use child labor as risk coping instruments. However, CCT help protect children from these shocks, creating an additional benefit from these programs as effective safety nets with long term benefits.

 

 

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