Latin America and the Caribbean in the World Economy 2011-2012: Continuing crisis in the centre and new opportunities for developing economies

Includes bibliography

Meeting the millennium poverty reduction targets in Latin America and the Caribbean

Includes bibliography

Millennium development goals: progress towards the right to health in Latin america and the Caribbean

Includes bibliography

Institutional requirements for market-led development in Latin America

Includes bibliography

The banking supervision agenda in Latin America

Includes bibliography

Distributional effects of eliminating the differential tax treatment of business and personal income in Chile

Includes bibliography

The employment situation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Employment formalization and labour income distribution

The employment situation in Latin America and the Caribbean is a twice-yearly report prepared jointly by the Economic Development Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Subregional Office for the South Cone of Latin America of the International Labour Organization (ILO). Strong job creation and wage gains have proved to be a key factors in reducing poverty —quite substantially— in our region over the past decade. Together with the implementation of innovative social policies, the narrowing of wage gaps has played a fundamental role in reducing inequality between households. The success of these two processes —reducing poverty and inequality— count among the most important achievements of this period. In the past few years, however, the fight against poverty has noticeably lost momentum,1 showing the extent to which job creation has been hit by the recent economic slowdown.

Children’s rights in the digital age

The digital divide exacerbates inequalities in access to information and knowledge, making it more difficult to socialize with peers and limiting awareness of and the ability to use basic tools for life in society. Reducing this gap sets in motion virtuous synergies of social and cultural inclusion for children and adolescents, facilitating skills development and generating lifelong opportunities. Although the younger generations are connected digital natives, inequalities persist among socioeconomic groups, though these have been tempered by connectivity programmes in public schools in the region. The main article of this edition of Challenges uses current information to examine the progress made and the gaps that remain in this area. Providing children and adolescents with access is merely a first step. They then need to be protected from the risks associated with information and communications technologies (ICTs), which must be harnessed for purposes of meaningful learning, promoting uses that are more in line with the educational curriculum. Lastly, the article posits that connectivity policies must be linked to the fulfilment of children’s rights in the framework of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As is customary, this issue also contains information on meetings and conferences held in the region during the year and recent publications in this field. Mention is also made of good practices from Peru in reducing gender gaps and a joint initiative between mobile operators and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to protect children in the digital age. Viewpoints includes expert opinion on the potential of ICTs as tools that can facilitate the exercise of the rights of children and adolescents, but also lead to violations of these rights.

The employment situation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Advances and challenges in measuring decent work

At 6.4%, the unemployment rate for the Latin American and Caribbean region overall was the lowest for the past few decades, down from 6.7% in 2011. This is significant, in view of the difficult employment situation prevailing in other world regions. Labour market indicators improved despite modest growth of just 3.0% in the region’s economy. Even with sharply rising labour market participation, the number of urban unemployed fell by around 400,000, on the back of relatively strong job creation. Nevertheless, around 15 million are still jobless in the region. Other highlights of 2012 labour market performance were that the gender gaps in labour market participation, unemployment and employment narrowed, albeit slightly; formal employment increased; the hourly underemployment rate declined; and average wages rose. This rendering was obviously not homogenous across the region. Labour market indicators worsened again in the Caribbean countries, for example, reflecting the sluggish performance of their economies. The sustainability of recent labour market progress is also a cause for concern. Most of the new jobs in the region were created as part of a self-perpetuating cycle in which new jobs and higher real wages (and greater access to credit) have boosted household purchasing power and so pushed up domestic demand. Much of this demand is for non-tradable goods and services (and imports), which has stimulated expansion of the tertiary sector and hence its demand for labour, and many of the new jobs have therefore arisen in these sectors of the economy. This dynamic certainly has positive implications in terms of labour and distribution, but the concern is whether it is sustainable in a context of still relatively low investment (even after some recent gains) which is, moreover, not structured in a manner conducive to diversifying production. Doubt hangs over the future growth of production capacity in the region, given the enormous challenges facing the region in terms of innovation, education quality, infrastructure and productivity. As vigorous job creation has driven progress in reducing unemployment, attention has turned once again to the characteristics of that employment. Awareness exists in the region that economic growth is essential, but not in itself sufficient to generate more and better jobs. For some time, ILO has been drawing attention to the fact that it is not enough to create any sort of employment. The concept of decent work, as proposed by ILO, emphasized the need for quality jobs which enshrine respect for fundamental rights at work. The United Nations General Assembly endorsed this notion and incorporated it into the targets set in the framework of the Millennium Development Goals. This eighth issue of the ECLAC/ILO publication “The employment situation in Latin America and the Caribbean” examines how the concept of decent work has evolved in the region, progress in measuring it and the challenges involved in building a system of decent work indicators, 14 years after the concept was first proposed. Although the concept of decent work has been accompanied since the outset by the challenge of measurement, its first objective was to generate a discussion on the best achievable labour practices in each country. Accordingly, rather than defining a universal threshold of what could be considered decent work —regarding which developed countries might have almost reached the target before starting, while poor countries could be left hopelessly behind— ILO called upon the countries to define their own criteria and measurements for promoting decent work policies. As a result, there is no shared set of variables for measuring decent work applicable to all countries. The suggestion is, instead, that countries move forward with measuring decent work on the basis of their own priorities, using the information they have available now and in the future. However, this strategy of progressing according to the data available in each country tends to complicate statistical comparison between them. So, once the countries have developed their respective systems of decent work indicators, it will be also be important to work towards harmonizing them. ECLAC and ILO are available to provide technical support to this end. With respect to 2013, there is cautious optimism regarding the performance of the region’s labour markets. If projections of a slight uptick —to 3.5%— in the region’s economic growth in 2013 are borne out, labour indicators should continue to gradually improve. This will bring new increases in real wages and a slight drop of up to 0.2 percentage points in the region’s unemployment rate, reflecting a fresh rise in the regional employment rate and slower growth in labour market participation.

The economics of climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean: Paradoxes and challenges. Overview for 2014

Foreword by Alicia Bárcena.

The cost of hunger: Social and economic impact of child undernutrition in Central America and the Dominican Republic

This document presents the results derived from the analyses of the cost of undernutrition in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic. The study shows that not only are the effects reported valid for the countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic, but the resultant economic impact is also significant, representing between 1.7% and 11.4% of GDP. In this regard, productivity losses as a consequence of the higher death rate and the lower level of education account for 90% of the costs. Thus, in addition to the ethical imperative, eradicating undernutrition would yield benefits as well. Therefore, any programme that is effective in reducing the prevalence of this problem will have an impact on people's quality of life, and will also represent major savings for society. The greater the problem, the greater the challenge, but the greater the benefits as well, especially in terms of countries' production capacity.

Productivity, social expenditure and income distribution in Latin America

This paper discusses the role of institutions and structural change in shaping income inequality. It is argued that while social expenditure and direct redistribution are crucial for improving income distribution, sustainable equality requires structural change to create decent jobs. The relative importance of these variables in different countries is analyzed and a typology suggested. It is argued that the most equal countries in the world combine strong institutions in favor of redistribution and knowledge-intensive production structures that sustain growth and employment in the long run. Both institutions and the production structure in Latin America fail to foster equality and this explains its extremely high levels of inequality. The last decade witnessed significant advances in reducing inequality in Latin America, but these advances are threatened by slow productivity growth and weak structural change.