Growth, Employment, and Poverty in Latin America

This book examines the links between economic growth, changing employment conditions, and the reduction of poverty in Latin America in the 2000s. Our analysis answers the following broad questions: Has economic growth resulted in gains in standards of living and reductions in poverty via improved labour market conditions in Latin America in the 2000s, and have these improvements halted or been reversed since the international crisis of 2008? How do the rate and character of economic growth, changes in the various employment and earnings indicators, and changes in poverty and inequality indicators relate to each other? Our contribution is an in-depth study of the multi-pronged growth-employment-poverty nexus based on a large number of labour market indicators (twelve employment and earnings indicators and four poverty and inequality indicators) for a large number of Latin American countries (sixteen of them). The book presents a positive and hopeful set of findings for the period 2000 to 2012/13. Economic growth took place and brought about improvements in almost all labour market indicators and consequent reductions in poverty rates. But not all improvements were equal in size or caused by the same things. Some macroeconomic factors were associated with changes in labour market conditions, some of them always in the welfare-improving direction and some others always in the welfare-reducing direction. Most countries in the region suffered a deterioration in at least some labour market indicators as a consequence of the international crisis of 2008, but the negative effects were reversed very quickly in most countries.

Guillermo Cruces, Deputy Director, Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales, Universidad Nacional de La Plata,Gary S. Fields, Professor of Economics and the John P. Windmuller Chair of International and Comparative Labor, Cornell University,David Jaume, PhD student in Economics, Cornell University,Mariana Viollaz, Senior Researcher, Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales, Universidad Nacional de La Plata

Guillermo Cruces (PhD in Economics, LSE) is the deputy director of the Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS) at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina (UNLP) and a research fellow at IZA. His research is focused on labor economics and distributional analysis in Latin America and the CaribbeanHe has published in journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Public Economics, Labour Economics, Journal of Population Economics, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Journal of Development Studies and Economia, and he has edited books and contributed to collective volumes and reports.

Gary Fields has been an Ivy League professor and researcher for more than 40 years. He conducts research and teaches courses on labour economics and development economics. He is the winner of the 2014 IZA Prize in Labour Economics, the top world-wide award in the fields. His most recent preceding book is Working Hard, Working Poor (Oxford University Press).

David Jaume is a Ph. D. in Economics student at Cornell University, and visiting researcher at CEDLAS. His work is focused on labor markets and income distribution in developing countries. He has published in the areas of economics of development and economics of education. He has also been a research fellow at CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, were he received his master's degree in Economics.


Mariana Viollaz has a PhD in Economics from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), Argentina. She is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS), at Universidad Nacional de La Plata. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the ILR School of Cornell University where she did research on the growth-employment-poverty nexus in Latin America during the 2000s. Her research is focused on labour and development economics in Latin America and the Caribbean.