Conceptos y medidas de la pobreza: una síntesis

Incluye Bibliografía

Estadísticas de la población economicamente activa, del empleo, del desempleo y del subempleo

Incluye Bibliografía

Participación laboral femenina y bono de género en América Latina

Este estudio presenta un panorama general de las tendencias de la participación laboral femenina en América Latina y, sobre esta base, aporta elementos conceptuales y metodológicos para el análisis del bono de género —entendido como el beneficio económico potencial que se obtiene por el incremento de la participación de la mujer en la actividad productiva— y para la cuantificación de su impacto económico en la región.

Midiendo el impacto de la infraestructura de la calidad en América Latina: experiencias, alcances y limitaciones

Incluye bibliografía.

Censos y población indígena en México: algunas reflexiones

Incluye bibliografía.

Informe regional sobre la medición de la discapacidad. Una mirada a los procedimientos de medición de la discapacidad en América Latina y el Caribe. Grupo de tareas sobre medición de la discapacidad Conferencia Estadística de las Américas (CEA)

Introducción .-- I. Inclusión de los lineamientos internacionales en los procesos de medición de la discapacidad en los países de América Latina y el Caribe .-- II. Situación actual de la medición de la discapacidad en los países de la región .-- III. Principales dificultades que enfrentan los países en la recolección de datos .-- Conclusiones.

Regional report on measuring disability: Overview of the disability measurement procedures in Latin America and the Caribbean. Task Force on Disability Measurement Statistical Conference of the Americas (SCA)

Introduction .-- I. Inclusion of international guidelines in disability measurement processes in Latin American and Caribbean countries .-- II. State of the art in disability measurement in the region’s countries .-- III. Main difficulties facing countries in terms of collecting information .-- Conclusions.

Argentina: recent dynamics in the software and IT services industry

Includes bibliography.

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 earnings share of total income in Latin America, 1990-2010

This article analyses the share of total income represented by employment earnings in the countries of Latin America over the last two decades. It first considers the wage share of gross domestic product (gdp) and then adds in the earnings of self-employed workers. The findings indicate that both total wages and total earnings declined as a share of gdp in most of the region’s countries over the period, although there were some exceptions. The reduction in earnings inequality seen over the past decade was not usually accompanied by an increase in the gdp share of earnings. This means that the improvement in personal income distribution was not matched by an improvement in functional distribution.

Index of political instability in Brazil, 1889-2009

This article aims to develop an index of political instability (ins) in Brazil between 1889 and 2009, reflecting a wide-ranging set of multiple phenomena that represent conflicts between the different social groups. By presenting different definitions of what is understood by political instability in the economics literature and by using multiple historical events —coups d’état, civil conflicts, constitutional or unconstitutional overthrow and changes in the composition of 50% of the ministerial cabinet— different indicators are obtained which are then synthesized into a single index using the principal component technique, to obtain an ins for Brazil between 1889 and 2009.

Estimación del gasto público en protección ambiental en Chile

La creciente preocupación de los países por proteger el medio ambiente ha motivado la generación de más y mejor información que sustente las decisiones de política pública. En esta línea, el Gobierno de Chile, respondiendo a sus compromisos internacionales e institucionales, a través del Ministerio del Medio Ambiente de Chile y en colaboración con la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), ha estimado por primera vez el gasto público en protección ambiental (GPPA) con estándares estadísticos internacionales.

Evaluation report of the regional workshop on the measurement of poverty in the Caribbean

1. The member and associate member countries of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean/Caribbean Development and Cooperation Committee (ECLAC/CDCC) have committed to pursuing and achieving the Millennium Development Goals, a common set of goals and targets to bring all people up to minimum acceptable standards of human development by 2015. 2. However, in spite of various capacity-building initiatives, Caribbean countries continued to experience difficulties in addressing additional demands of monitoring and measuring progress created by the Millennium Development Goals and other Internationally Agreed Development Goals. Therefore, it was necessary to implement activities to ensure the further building/strengthening of institutional capabilities for generating reliable social, economic and environmental statistics among Caribbean States. 3. The ECLAC project entitled “Strengthening the Capacity of National Statistical Offices in the Caribbean Small Island Developing States to fulfil the Millennium Development Goals and other Internationally Agreed Development Goals” sought to build and strengthen institutional capabilities for generating and compiling reliable social, economic and environmental statistics in the Caribbean subregion, through the provision of technical support, as well as the conduct of training workshops for statisticians and policymakers. 4. Within the objectives of that project, ECLAC Subregional Headquarters for the Caribbean convened a regional training workshop on the measurement of poverty in the Caribbean in Port of Spain, to build the capacity of government officials and other relevant stakeholders. 5. The overall objective of the workshop was to develop and strengthen the national technical capacity of public officials in data processing, systematization and dissemination of poverty indicators and measurement in the Caribbean subregion. The workshop further sought to review and discuss the current approaches to poverty measurement and monitoring in an effort to identify methods to ensure that monitoring and reporting of the Millennium Development Goals were conducted according to internationally agreed upon methodologies. Furthermore, the workshop also intended to review different methods of poverty measurements, including the multidimensional methodology for the measurement of poverty. 6. Participants were introduced to different methods of poverty measurements and other aggregation proposals which would enable countries to better measure progress towards Goal 1 on poverty, report on it and apply evidence-based approaches to national policymaking and planning.

Determinantes de la salida de IED y efectos en el país emisor: evidencia de América Latina

Desde el inicio de los años 2000, la inversión extranjera directa (IED) realizada por compañías latinoamericanas viene creciendo de manera pronunciada. Si bien la mayoría de los flujos de inversiones corresponden a empresas radicadas en las grandes economías (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, México y Colombia), las pequeñas economías también han sido testigos de la creciente internacionalización de sus empresas locales. Este documento tiene dos aportes principales. En primer lugar, se analizan las estrategias adoptadas por las empresas multinacionales de América Latina cuando deciden invertir en otros países, y se hace hincapié en las diferencias detectadas según el sector y el tamaño del país de origen. Con este objeto, se creó una nueva base de datos, que contiene información cuantitativa acerca de las principales operaciones llevadas a cabo en el extranjero por las empresas latinoamericanas (tanto la inversión en nuevas plantas como las fusiones y adquisiciones), sobre la base del banco de datos fDi Markets y la información de Thomson Reuters Datastream. En segundo lugar, se examinan los efectos que tiene en el país emisor la salida de IED mediante el estudio de un caso correspondiente a Costa Rica, por medio de una muestra representativa de empresas que invierten en otros países.

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.