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...

We analyze how relative wage movements among birth cohorts and education groups affected the distribution of household consumption and economic welfare. Our empirical work draws on the best available cross-sectional data sets to construct synthetic panel data on U.S. consumption, labor supply...

We analyze how relative wage movements across birth cohorts and education groups during the 1980s affected the distribution of household consumption. The analysis integrates the labor economics literature on time variation in the wage structure with the consumption insurance literature. In...