The purpose of this study is to analyze the evolution of income inequality in Uruguay in 1986-2009 and its main driving forces. During 1986-1994 inequality remained almost unchanged, whearas it grew in 1994-2007 and startd to fall in 2007-2009. We carry out an inequality decomposition by income...

This article analyzes a survey among 15 year-old adolescents that dropped out of the formal educational system before completing junior high. It is the first study that uses data on cognitive skills, self-perception of skills and expectations of future studies that were gathered when these...

This paper tests the existence of poverty traps in three Southern Cone countries: Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. We apply the methodology developed by Antman and McKenzie (2005): based on pseudopanels, we model the income dynamics of households and analyze the existence of heterogeneity in their...

The present document gathers the main results of a survey conducted by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE). The survey was conducted in the framework of a cooperation agreement between the INE, the Social Development Ministry (MIDES) and Universidad e la República (UDELAR). The aim of...

This paper analyzes the evolution of income inequality and characterizes income mobility in Uruguay during the period 2009-2012, focusing on top income groups. The study exploits novel individual-level panel data based on personal income tax records, which contain information on income, taxes...

After increasing over more than a decade, recent studies based on household surveys data show that income inequality in Uruguay started to decline in 2008. In this study we assess whether this trend is robust to the use of novel micro-data from the recently restored Uruguayan personal income tax...

This paper analyzes how the informality responds to the quality of the labor enforcement and the bundle of benefits that the formal workers receive in different countries of Latin America. Countries with different levels of informality were compared, highlighting the features that could induce...

Investment promotion through tax incentives has been a key component of the last two governments’ strategy to stimulate the accumulation of productive assets. A public policy mechanism such as the Investment Promotion Regime (IPR, established by Decree 455/007) inevitably raises questions...

This article studies how social insurance programs shape individual’s incentives to take up registered employment and to report earnings to the tax authorities. The analysis is based on a social insurance reform in Uruguay that extended healthcare coverage to the dependent children of...

Concerning rural labor, Uruguay is a special case in the region since the level of coverage of social security for rural workers is high (above 70%), while they have some benefits that are typically not found for these workers, such as a specific unemployment allowance. In this work, using...