In light of recent results, the fight against poverty in Latin America has been far from satisfactory. The standard approach of multicultural credit agencies will continue to be limited if it does not stress the central role of the distribution as well as the accumulation of productive assets,...

The objective of this work is to assess the changes in poverty and inequality that have taken place in Latin America and the Caribbean from 1970 to 1995, with special emphasis on the 1990s. The main distinctive characteristic of the study is that rather than focusing on individual country...

Escaping the Poverty Trap proposes early childhood investment policies that could decisively change the prospects for the next generation of the region's poor. Contributors include Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and Gro Harlem Brundtland, former director-general of the World Health Organization. In...

This paper develops and applies a new approach to the estimation of the impact of economy-wide reforms on wage differentials, using a new high-quality data set on wage differentials by schooling level for 18 Latin American countries for the period 1980-1998. The results indicate that reform...

The evidence shows that government spending for health in many developing countries benefits the well-to-do more than the poor. However, a combination of favorable political forces and sound public policies can shift the focus of government expenditures toward the poor. Doing this is an...

Escaping the Poverty Trap proposes early childhood investment policies that could decisively change the prospects for the next generation of the region's poor. Contributors include Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and Gro Harlem Brundtland, former director-general of the World Health Organization. In...

This paper discusses the ways in which macroeconomic developments can put stress on banks, and in extreme cases lead to banking crises. There are many ways in which this can occur, and no specific mechanism is endorsed. These macroeconomic causes of bank vulnerability and crisis have important...

"Presents and analyzes data on extent of and trends in poverty from 1950-94. Uses these trends to project poverty to 2025. Concludes that rapid decreases in poverty will occur only if region devotes significantly more resources to education"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57