Changes in the urban female labour market

Includes bibliography

Determinants of inequality among urban households

Includes bibliography

The labour market and income distribution in Colombia in the 1990s

Includes bibliography

Income poverty and unsatisfied basic needs

Incluye Bibliografía

Characteristics of households with ICTs in Latin America and the Caribbean

Includes bibliography

ICT in Latin America: a microdata analysis

Includes bibliography

Social Panorama of Latin America 1993

Incluye Bibliografía

Report of the regional workshop on microdata documentation and dissemination (IHSN Toolkit)

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Subregional Headquarters for the Caribbean, in collaboration with the World Bank, conducted a week-long Regional Workshop on Microdata Documentation and Dissemination. The workshop, which was funded by the Partnership in Statistics for Development in the Twenty-First Century (PARIS21) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), was held at the Hilton Hotel and Conference Centre in Port of Spain, Trinidad, from 26 to 30 April 2010. The main objective of the workshop was to provide training to member States on the Microdata Management Toolkit. This toolkit was developed by International Household Surveys Networks (IHSN) to assist in the documentation, dissemination and preservation of household survey, census and microdata in accordance with international standards and best practices. The training was organized in response to numerous requests by directors of statistics in the region for the development of capacity in that area. It was specifically timed to meet the training needs of those offices ahead of the 2010 round of Population and Housing Censuses.

Evaluation report: regional training workshop on data sharing, data ownerhsip and the harmonization of survey datasets

As part of ongoing efforts to strengthen the statistical capacities of National Statistical Offices (NSOs) in the region, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) convened a two-day Regional Training Workshop on Data Sharing, Data Ownership and Harmonization of Survey Datasets on 26-27 August 2009 at the Cascadia Hotel, Trinidad and Tobago. This workshop was one of the concluding activities of the Project on Improving Household Surveys in the Caribbean which has been implemented by the ECLAC Subregional office from 2007.

Socio-demographic analysis of youth in the Caribbean- a three country case study

Many Caribbean youth are doing reasonably well. They live in loving and caring families, attend school and are involved in various social activities in their communities. The health and well-being of the children and youth1 in the Caribbean is, and has been, the centre of attention of many studies, meetings and policy directives set at the regional, subregional and national levels. Programmes have been put in place to address the basic needs of young children in the areas of health and education and to provide guidance and directives to youth and adolescents in the area of professional formation and transition to adulthood. Critical issues such as reproductive health and family planning combined with access to education and information on these topics have been promoted to some extent. And finally, the Caribbean is known for rather high school enrolment rates in primary education that hardly show any gender disparities. While the situation is still good for some, growing numbers of children and youth cannot cope anymore with the challenges experienced quite early in their lives. Absent parents, instable care-taking arrangements, violence and aggression subjected to at home, in schools and among their friends, lack of a perspective in schools and the labour-market, early sexual initiation and teenage pregnancies are some of those issues faced by a rising number of young persons in this part of the world. Emotional instability, psychological stress and increased violence are one of the key triggers for increased violence and involvement in crime exhibited by ever younger youth and children. Further, the region is grappling with rising drop-out rates in secondary education, declining quality schooling in the classrooms and increasing numbers of students who leave school without formal certification. Youth unemployment in the formal labour market is high and improving the quality of professional formation along with the provision of adequate employment opportunities would be critical to enable youth to complete consistently and effectively the transition into adulthood and to take advantage of the opportunities to develop and use their human capital in the process. On a rather general note, the region does not suffer from a shortage of policies and programmes to address the very specific needs of children and youth, but the prominent and severe lack of systematic analysis and monitoring of the situation of children, youth and young families in the Caribbean does not allow for targeted and efficient interventions that promise successful outcomes on the long term. In an effort to assist interested governments to fill this analytical gap, various initiatives are underway to enhance data collection and their systematic analysis2. Population and household censuses are conducted every decade and a variety of household surveys, such as surveys of living conditions, labour force surveys and special surveys focusing on particular sub-groups of the population are conducted, dependent on the resources available, to a varying degree in the countries of the region. One such example is the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)-funded Multi-Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) that assess the situation of children and youth in a country. Over the past years and at present, UNICEF has launched a series of surveys in a number of countries in the Caribbean3. But more needs to be done to ensure that the data available is analyzed to provide the empirical background information for evidence-based policy formulation and monitoring of the efficiency and effectiveness of the efforts undertaken.

Notas de Población Vol. 42 N° 101

La edición número 101 de Notas de Población contiene nueve artículos sobre temas de gran actualidad y relevancia futura en el campo de la investigación sociodemográfica en América Latina y el Caribe. La variada gama de asuntos que se abordan en la presente edición empieza con la aplicación del modelo de transición logística y las proyecciones de población, pasando por el análisis de la transición epidemiológica de la mortalidad infantil en América Latina y los determinantes de la fecundidad adolescente y su relación con la distribución territorial. Continúa con el envejecimiento, su relación con las condiciones de la vivienda, la migración calificada y el análisis del ciclo vital de las personas en relación con una esperanza de vida sana. Concluye con la percepción de la alteridad en la declaración del color y la raza en la encuesta de empleo del Brasil.

The redistributive potential of taxation in Latin America

This study uses internationally comparable methodologies to analyse the distributional impact of income tax and public transfers in 17 countries of Latin America. The results indicate that fiscal policy plays a limited role in improving the distribution of disposable income; the Gini coefficient decreased by barely three percentage points after direct fiscal action. On average, 61% of this reduction was due to public cash transfers and the rest to direct taxes, reflecting the pressing need for personal income tax to be strengthened. Analysis of household surveys gives an indication of the potential effects of tax reforms aimed at increasing the average effective tax rate of the top income decile. Allocating this additional revenue to targeted transfers would produce significant results. Consequently, tax reforms must be evaluated bearing in mind how those resources are used.

Inclusión de la variable etnia en las fuentes de información sociodemográfica del Ecuador

Las crecientes demandas de participación en la vida social, política y económica de los pueblos y nacionalidades indígenas del Ecuador durante los últimos veinte años han incidido directamente en la visibilización de estos actores como parte constitutiva del país. Existen varias cifras sobre el número de habitantes indígenas en el Ecuador, lo que ha impulsado un debate sobre la validez de las diferentes metodologías de recolección de información que permita tener datos desagregados por condición étnica, y lo que es más importante sobre las condiciones de vida de los pueblos y nacionalidades indígenas y las brechas de equidad que se observan en cuanto a indicadores de desarrollo entre los distintos grupos de población. El presente documento es una síntesis de la revisión de los instrumentos de recolección de información que incluyen la variable “etnia” y las diferentes formas de capturar el dato. Revisión que involucró el análisis crítico de cada uno de los procesos por parte de los responsables técnicos de la producción de las estadísticas y también con los representantes de las nacionalidades y pueblos indígenas del Ecuador con la finalidad de identificar las limitaciones de los instrumentos y/o las dificultades del proceso que hace que los pueblos indígenas se sientan sub representados en las estadísticas oficiales.

Coyuntura laboral en América Latina y el Caribe: mejoras recientes y brechas persistentes en el empleo rural

Como se señala en esta nueva edición de Coyuntura Laboral en América Latina y el Caribe, publicación semestral elaborada en forma conjunta por la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL) y la Oficina para el Cono Sur de América Latina de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT), la debilidad de la generación de empleo se manifiesta en la tercera caída anual consecutiva de la tasa de ocupación, que se redujo 0,4 puntos porcentuales en 2015, lo que implica una reducción del número de perceptores de ingresos laborales por hogar. El descenso correspondiente de los ingresos ha desempeñado un papel muy significativo en el aumento estimado de la pobreza durante 2015. En la segunda sección de este informe, se analiza la evolución del empleo en las áreas rurales de los países de la región entre 2005 y 2014, en un esfuerzo por comprender si las mejoras que se observan para los mercados laborales en su conjunto entre ambos años también se registraron en el ámbito rural y si se redujeron las brechas respecto a las zonas urbanas. Los datos presentados en esa sección se obtuvieron mediante un procesamiento especial de las encuestas de hogares de los países.

Employment Situation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Recent improvements and persistent gaps in rural employment

This new edition of Employment situation in Latin America and the Caribbean, a twice-yearly report prepared jointly by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Office for the Southern Cone of Latin America of the International Labour Organization (ILO), discusses how weak job creation led to the third consecutive annual decline in the employment rate, which fell by 0.4 percentage points in 2015, indicating a reduction in the number of labour income earners per household. The ensuing drop in household income has played a large part in the increase estimated in the poverty rate for 2015. The second section of this report examines employment trends in rural areas of the countries of the region between 2005 and 2014, seeing to establish whether the improvements seen in the labour markets overall in that period also occurred in rural areas, and whether the gaps compared with urban areas decreased. The data presented in that section were generated from special processing of data from national household surveys.