Poverty reduction remains one of the main challenges for Latin America at the end of the 20th century. We argue that poverty in Latin America or at least the 'excess poverty' given the level of income in the region, is a problem caused mainly by high inequality. But, income inequality in the...

This paper presents evidence on the relationship between economic shocks to relative male wages and changes in household consumption in Mexico during the 1990s, which is a period characterized by high volatility. In addition to performing this type of analysis for Mexico for the first time, the...

East Asia and Latin America have diverged in several dimensions in the past three decades. This paper compares household saving behavior in two countries in each region (Mexico, Peru, Thailand and Taiwan). We make four contributions. First, we provide the first comparisons of savings in these...