All posts tagged Poverty & Inequality

Brazil: COVID Pandemic Worsens Gender Inequalities

By Cristina Pereira Vieceli*

Participation rate of men and women in the labor market – fourth quarter 2014 to second quarter 2021


Source: Author’s elaboration based on PNAD-C/IBGE.

The COVID‑19 pandemic has worsened the already precarious state of employment for women in Brazil, reversing the modest progress they made in recent years and deepening gender inequalities. Brazil has had one of the world’s worst infection and death rates during the pandemic. As of last month, more than 600,000 people had died from the disease, second worst worldwide in absolute numbers. The pandemic has profoundly affected the Brazilian economy, mainly hurting the poorest populations, including women.

The 2015‑2016 recession and its aftermath, as well as neoliberal reforms introduced in 2017, left Brazil and particularly its labor force vulnerable to the pandemic and resulting economic slowdown.

  • The industrial and civil construction sectors, for example, underwent changes that had a profound impact on the labor market, with the deepening of the precariousness of contractual forms of employment. Labor reforms established, among other changes, new hiring formats, such as intermittent working hours and more flexible rules for part-time contracts. Promoted as necessary to “modernize” the labor market and thus increase productivity and hiring, the reforms have actually increased informality in the labor market and growth in self-employment. Between the fourth quarter of 2014 and second quarter of this year, the number of registered workers dropped from 36.35 million to 33.66 million – a decrease of 2.682 million jobs. Informal jobs increased by 1.435 million during the same period.
  • Women workers experienced divergent effects from the recession. From 2015 to 2019, the percentage of female private-sector employees decreased from 43.6 percent to 42.06 percent, but expansion of self-employment increased their overall participation rate from 50.6 percent to 53.1 percent. Wage inequalities between men and women, against a backdrop of falling wages for the working class, also narrowed. This “feminization of the workforce” occurred mainly between the fourth quarter 2014 and the first quarter of 2017, when the average working female’s earnings rose from 75.41 percent of the average male’s to 78.64 percent.

The pandemic hit a precarious labor market – with dire implications for labor security, especially among women. 

  • In the year beginning the fourth quarter of 2019, about 3.8 million formal jobs in the private sector for both women and men disappeared. Between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the second quarter of this year – the period of greatest pandemic control – only 304,000 jobs were created in the formal private sector, and informal-sector jobs dipped by about 1.9 million. Unregistered workers in the private and public sectors, including domestic workers, self-employed, and auxiliary family workers – 44.3 percent of the workforce (or 41 million workers) in 2014 – amounted to 48.73 percent (43 million) this year. 
  • With COVID, the upward trend in participation of women in the labor market has reversed. Activities that employ women in education, tourism, and public and domestic services have contracted, while unpaid domestic work has increased the burden facing the female workforce. Men at the same social level have also suffered setbacks (dropping 4.7 percent in participation), but women have left the workforce in greater numbers (dropping 5.3 percent). The income ratio between women and men has also declined because many women work in sectorswith a low level of formalization. 

The labor participation of men and women remains deeply polarized and, while both sexes face greater overall precariousness, the data clearly show that women have suffered significantly greater setbacks over the years. The unemployment rate among women grew from 7.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014 to 13.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019 – and jumped to 17.1 percent this year. Male unemployment was 9.2 percent in 2019 and 11.7 percent in the second quarter of 2021.

  • In-depth analysis of the data by class, race, and age would almost certainly show a similar trend: the vulnerable have grown more vulnerable through the country’s crises. It is clear that the populations most affected by the pandemic are those belonging to the low-income classes, which have a strong racial bias. Domestic workers, for example, were hit hard by job losses, with a dropout of 1.286 million workers in 2020 alone. Considering that more than 60 percent of domestic workers are black, most are in informal jobs with low wages.

November 3, 2021

* Cristina Pereira Vieceli is an economist at the Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socio-Economic Studies (DIEESE) in Florianópolis and the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Porto Alegre. She is also a faculty fellow in economics at American University.

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by clalsstaff on November 3, 2021  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on November 3, 2021

https://aulablog.net/2021/11/03/brazil-covid-pandemic-worsens-gender-inequalities/

Latin America: Is COVID Creating Space for Tax Reform?

By Tasha Fairfield*

National strike in Colombia against the Duque administration’s proposed tax reform/ Oxi.Ap/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

The COVID‑19 pandemic and associated fiscal stress have pushed taxation to the forefront of national political agendas in Latin America and beyond, but leaders need to learn from past failures to achieve success. The question of taxing the rich has gained salience, giving rise to multiple proposals for wealth taxes around the globe. Debate over raising revenue to finance social spending and other pandemic-related priorities by taxing economic elites is particularly important in Latin America, given its staggering inequality.

  • Economically, raising revenue from the upper crust of the income and wealth distribution can actually be optimal and efficient, as Piketty and Saez have shown. From a normative perspective, almost everyone agrees that, in principle, those with more should bear a larger portion of the tax burden. Taxing the rich should be especially popular in highly unequal countries, where the rich are a tiny fraction of the populations and the vast majority would stand to benefit.  

The politics of taxing economic elites tend to be more complicated, however. On the one hand, big business conglomerates and wealthy individuals often enjoy multiple sources of power that end up mattering more than public opinion during the policymaking process. On the other hand, while the majority may approve of progressive taxation, neither voters nor social movements have given priority to demanding that economic elites be taxed more heavily. They tend to see taxation as not directly affecting average citizens, and the technical details of reform initiatives can be difficult. Public support can nevertheless play an important role in counterbalancing the power of economic elites – especially during electoral periods, when politicians tend to be more concerned about what voters want.

  • When progressive tax initiatives do not visibly and narrowly target economic elites – as occurred in Bolivia’s attempt to reinstate an individual income tax in 2003 – the public may reject them. In the Bolivian case, Finance Ministry experts designed a technically appealing flat tax that would be easy to administer yet progressive in practice, thanks to a threshold exemption that produced higher effective tax rates for higher income earners. But the flat marginal tax rate sparked widespread misperception that the proposal was regressive.
  • Inconsistent government messaging also fostered misperceptions that the tax would affect a wide swath of Bolivians. President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada at one point asked the “middle class” to “assume this sacrifice,” even though in reality that “middle class” was only a tiny, privileged group of highly paid wage-earners and independent professionals. The proposed reform ended up provoking popular protests, despite the fact that most participants would have been exempt from the tax, and the reform was quickly abandoned. 

The pandemic era increases the opportunity that a strategy linking tax reform to social spending – an approach that has been used successfully in many previous instances – will gain momentum. Programs that provide tangible benefits naturally draw greater interest and support from popular sectors than taxes targeting economic elites.

  • The more immediate and visible the associated benefits, such as expanded and more generous cash transfers, the more effective this strategy can be. In Chile, for example, center-left governments in the 1990s and 2000s made popular social spending initiatives contingent on tax increases, leaving the rightwing opposition exposed to popular wrath if they the chose to vote against the package. An analogous approach is earmarking tax increases to finance social programs. Technocrats dislike earmarking because it creates budget rigidities, but the political advantages are clear.
  • The pandemic has greatly augmented social need and threatens to exacerbate inequality. Colombia’s experience last May, however, shows that linking spending to taxes alone may not be enough. The Duque administration’s proposed tax reform was explicitly intended to finance expansion of basic income support for poor Colombians, and the measures were presented together within a single reform package. Yet the initiative failed because the tax measures were not adequately targeted at economic elites. A second effort later in the year fared better because the sales tax measures and a proposed income tax threshold reduction were removed.

October 13, 2021

* Tasha Fairfield is an associate professor in development studies at the London School of Economics. Her book, Private Wealth and Public Revenue in Latin America: Business Power and Tax Politics, examines how and when the interests of economic elites prevail in unequal democracies through comparative analysis of tax reform in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia after economic liberalization.

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by clalsstaff on October 13, 2021  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on October 13, 2021

https://aulablog.net/2021/10/13/latin-america-is-covid-creating-space-for-tax-reform/

Nicaragua: Triple-Crisis Threatens More Instability, Poverty, and Migration

By William Vigil*

EU solidarity: helping Central America recover after hurricanes ETA and IOTA / European Union (D. Membreño) / Flickr / Creative Commons License

Three years of political unrest, COVID-19, and back-to-back Category 4 hurricanes last November have created a precarious situation in Nicaragua – raising the probability of increased instability, poverty, and migration into Costa Rica and northward toward the United States. Long ranked the second poorest country in the hemisphere (after Haiti), the country has experienced worsening socio-economic conditions since 2018, and shrinking democratic and civic spaces have deepened political polarization.

  • In 2018, the government cracked down on protests triggered by cuts in social security benefits, followed by months of violent suppression of unrest and demands for a democratic opening. The result was more than 325 dead, thousands wounded, mass detentions, and the exodus of more than 100,000 persons.
  • The turmoil drove a steep downturn in the economy. According to the Nicaraguan Central Bank (BCN), Nicaragua’s economy contracted 4.0 percent in 2018 and 3.9 percent in 2019, while inflation increased to 3.9 percent and 6.1 percent respectively. Other sources estimate a 4.0 percent decline in 2020. According to the World Bank, investment and consumption fell sharply, prompting significant unemployment, particularly in construction, commerce, and tourism. A 2019 household survey by Fundación Internacional para el Desafío Económico Global (FIDEG), a Nicaraguan think tank, indicated that poverty rates had increased at the national level, both in terms of general poverty and extreme poverty.
  • Efforts by national and international groups to advance dialogue to reduce political tensions have not been successful. Framework accords in March 2019 on the release of political prisoners and the restoration of civil rights were only partially fruitful. Targeted international sanctions against government individuals and entities have been intermittent and have not changed government behavior. Some measures have led to retribution, moreover, such as the abrupt closure of the UN and OAS human rights missions in the country.

Nicaragua’s policies regarding COVID‑19 have been erratic and haphazard, and recovery from last November’s hurricanes has been slow. Leaders initially argued that the country’s economic challenges made quarantine largely untenable, and Nicaragua attempted Sweden’s policy of “herd immunity” despite the dramatically different national and institutional capacities of the two countries. In addition, Hurricanes Eta and Iota left tens of thousands of people homeless and without drinking water. According to the Nicaraguan Finance Minister, 3 million people in 56 municipalities were affected, with estimated economic damages of $738 million.

  • Nicaragua has experienced a surge in unemployment, but – in contrast to other countries – has not adopted policies favoring a return to pre-crises levels. Some economists estimate that basic necessities and services now cost more than double the average household income. According to a Gallup poll taken in January, six out of every 10 Nicaraguans would migrate to other countries if they had the opportunity.

These crises do not show credible signs of abating. They significantly increase the likelihood of a challenging outlook, particularly for the country’s most vulnerable population groups. Systematic and comprehensive action has been lacking in and outside the country, however. The international community, including donors, multilateral banks, development agencies, and NGOs, has not been in a position to respond to the crises in a coordinated fashion. Their natural desire to seek a prominent role for civil society in any comprehensive strategy – with accountability and transparency – is frustrated by government resistance.

  • Nicaragua’s volatile political situation could eventually evolve into a humanitarian crisis with repercussions for the rest of the region. Tensions will increase as national elections scheduled for November approach, as all indications are that the government will further restrict civil and political rights. The country’s problems, moreover, could easily spill over its borders. Migration has traditionally been an escape valve. A new wave of refugees could be expected in Costa Rica, but that country’s own economic challenges may well instead drive many to head north.
  • International assistance alone won’t be enough. Conditions of strict accountability, transparency, civil society engagement, and close consultation with affected populations are necessary for it to have significant impact. Together, donors, multilateral banks, the UN, and NGOs have a degree of leverage to ensure the correct use of resources, such as by conditioning it on full respect for human rights. UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet last month called on the government to “urgently adopt effective electoral reforms and establish a genuine and inclusive dialogue with all sectors of society,” but slowing or stopping the country’s downward spiral will require much more from all sides.

March 23, 2021

* William Vigil is co-director of the South-North Nexus. He is a former Nicaraguan diplomat who served in New York (at the United Nations) and in Washington, D.C. This article is based on a South-North Nexus report entitled Nicaragua’s Converging Crises.

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by clalsstaff on March 23, 2021  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on March 23, 2021

https://aulablog.net/2021/03/23/nicaragua-triple-crisis-threatens-more-instability-poverty-and-migration/

Latin America: Total Chaos?

By Carlos Malamud*

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South American Presidents waving to the cameras in Santiago, Chile / Flickr / Creative Commons

Democracy and democratic values are in crisis throughout South and Central America, but the causes – and solutions – vary across the region, with rays of hope that at least some countries will find their way forward. The Bolivian elections, plagued by suspicions of fraud, reflect some of the problems that affect all of Latin America. The previously unbeaten President Evo Morales, in government since 2006, has now shown his limits and, even if his election is confirmed, will govern without the parliamentary majorities he enjoyed in the past.

  • Latin America witnessed violent protests almost simultaneously in Ecuador and Chile; Mexico blinked during a confrontation with the son of narcotics kingpin Chapo Guzmán; the Congress was dissolved in Peru; an ex-President in the Dominican Republic denounced as fraudulent the primary election he lost and joined another party to be its candidate; and a massive exodus continued pouring out of Venezuela, whose crisis is terminal but without an expiration date.
  • The Argentine and Uruguayan elections on October 27 marked the end of a three-year cycle of elections during which 14 countries voted to elect or re-elect their presidents. Speculation was originally that a swing to the right would counteract the Bolivarianism of the previous swing to the left. That shift never happened. In its place, a more heterogeneous and divided Latin America emerged, reflected in the outcome of the Argentine and Uruguayan elections, and in the not-insignificant fact that Mexico is governed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador while Brazil, the other regional power, has Jair Bolsonaro.

The causes of this wave of divisiveness are the subject of different theories. Many observers speak of a Castro-Chavista conspiracy, orchestrated by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the leftist São Paulo Forum. Others think it’s a popular reaction to the drastic adjustment programs of the IMF. Yet others argue about a contagion factor and the impact of social networks, which enable real-time communication and the transfer of vivid images of events. Nonetheless, any theory that tries to harness all of these theories will be flawed because each national reality is responding to different logic and dynamics.

  • All of the countries of the region are experiencing inequality, poverty, corruption, violence and narco-trafficking, unhappiness with democracy and its institutions, rejection of politicians, and the impact of the “new politics” of social media and fake news. But they are not present to the same proportions.
  • Neoliberal, Bolivarian, and populist governments are all suffering from rebellions. The Chilean protests over transportation fees under neoliberal President Piñera were preceded by protests in Brazil in 2013 under progressive President Dilma Rousseff. If Piñera resorts to military force to stop the protests, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega did something similar in 2018, killing more than 300. The IMF might have been behind the reduction of fuel subsidies in Ecuador, but it had no role in Chile. While elections went as normal in Argentina and Uruguay, in Bolivia, like in Venezuela, the allegations of fraud have been constant.

The solutions to each country’s challenges will have to be as different as their causes. While one country needs deeper economic adjustment, another needs to fix its political institutions. Each is going to have to find its way through the crises. Latin America will find little solace, moreover, in the fact that this high level of conflict is not exclusive to its region. From Hong Kong to Cataluña, or in Libya and Lebanon, similar challenges are disrupting national life.

  • Amid the many indications that representative or liberal democracy is under direct attack – that we may be facing the end of an era with potentially dire implications – some positive notes are visible in Latin America. In addition to the orderly contests in Argentina and Uruguay, the local and regional elections in Colombia in late October were an effective exercise in democracy – won by the center and lost by the extremes. Uribismo on the right and Gustavo Petro on the left were the big losers. The emerging symbol was Claudia López, the first woman elected mayor of Bogotá, who is also a lesbian, environmentalist, and leader against corruption. The path ahead is certainly not going to be easy for Latin America, but there is evidence that, with a big dose of tolerance and respect for each other’s reality, Latin Americans can do a lot better.

November 5, 2019

* Carlos Malamud is Senior Analyst for Latin America at the Elcano Royal Institute and Professor of Latin American History at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid. A version of this article originally was published as Turbulencias latinoamericanas in El Clarín of Buenos Aires.

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by clalsstaff on November 5, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on November 5, 2019

https://aulablog.net/2019/11/05/latin-america-total-chaos/

Latin America: Research Can Drive Inclusion

By Judith Sutz and Rodrigo Arocena*

A woman points to a microscope while a man looks on.

Researchers from Uruguay’s Universidad de la República worked with partners from the World Health Organization on a project to prevent dengue fever in Salto, Uruguay. / PAHO / Flickr / Creative Commons

Research programs that address “invisible problems” in society – challenges that are generally overlooked – increase marginalized people’s inclusion far beyond solution of their immediate problems.  Problems lacking “agency” get little or no attention as competing demands for public funding crowd out resources for studying problems suffered by marginalized groups.  The solutions that arise from most research, moreover, are often too expensive and too elaborate for the less fortunate.

  • Many health problems denominated “neglected diseases” fall within what the World Health Organization calls “the 90/10 gap.” Some 90 percent of all the health research done around the world is devoted to the kind of health issues suffered by 10 percent of the world population, while the 90 percent get scant attention.

Money and political will are only part of the problem.  Research to identify a problem is in itself a challenge.  Our research indicates that some initial research is often all that is necessary to make an “invisible problem” explicit enough for policymakers to be forced to pay attention.

  • In Uruguay, a university research program in 2010 uncovered the link between rice workers’ health problems, including early death, and agrochemicals seeping into the water spread at plantations. The link was difficult to detect because their symptoms were all “normal” and had other common explanations, but an interdisciplinary team analyzed epidemiological data to confirm it, which prompted the Ministry of Public Health to take action.

A second challenge is developing new approaches to adapt existing solutions that work for the well off to sectors without resources.  Many times in the past, research stopped when a solution, albeit a costly one, was found – which has the consequence of excluding sectors of modest means.  But we know that new intellectual directions can break through even those technological barriers.

  • Once a vaccine was found for the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), a dangerous pathogen that causes meningitis and other life-threatening diseases in children under five, the threat disappeared from developed countries. But it remained dangerous elsewhere in the world due to the high cost of the vaccine.  Researchers at the University of Havana explored a new approach and designed a synthetic vaccine with a very low cost of production – which many scientists have hailed as an important success.  Argentinean scientists’ development of a probiotic yogurt – called Yogurito – has provided an affordable solution to provide lactobacilli that children need for digestive health.  These “frugal innovations” yield huge benefits.

An inclusive research agenda – promoted by universities and other thought leaders throughout Latin America – can transform knowledge into a tool for social inclusion if the knowledge produced and diffused in the innovation system is focused on the broadest possible segment of society.  A Copernican shift of research agendas worldwide is unlikely in the short term, but a commitment to human sustainable development will necessarily open spaces for broader agendas over time.  Democratization of access to higher education is one important driver in building “inclusive innovation systems.”  In both developed and underdeveloped societies, “developmental universities” can play a big role in solving problems and, importantly, enfranchising broader segments of the population.  Inequality in knowledge – forgetting people with forgotten problems – is a source of broader inequality the reversal of which will be of benefit to all.  Seeing victims of illness who lack the cures that wealthier citizens have as agents, rather than just as patients, is an important first step.

September 20, 2018

* Judith Sutz is Professor and Academic Coordinator of the University Research Council of the Universidad de la República, Uruguay, and Rodrigo Arocena was the University’s rector.  Their recent book is Developmental Universities in Inclusive Innovation Systems: Alternatives for Knowledge Democratization in the Global South (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

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by clalsstaff on September 20, 2018  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on September 20, 2018

https://aulablog.net/2018/09/20/latin-america-research-can-drive-inclusion/

Who Really Benefited from the Commodities Supercycle – and Who Loses with Its End?

By Carlos Monge*

2017-05-13 AULABLOG_Carlos_Monge_graphic

Latin American governments and business associations have tended to overstate the benefits of extractive industries during the commodities supercycle that ended in 2014-15.  Resource-rich Latin American countries did experience high rates of economic growth and diminished poverty and inequality during the boom years.  On the surface, this would appear to strengthen arguments that – despite their negative environmental impact – extractive industries are the key to progress, especially in resource-rich areas.  Nevertheless, a closer look at data from household surveys in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru shows that things are a bit more complicated.

  • The inequality gap between individuals, as measured on the GINI Index, has narrowed, but the gaps between groups of the population have not evolved evenly. For example, the National Resource Governance Institute (of which I’m regional director) recently completed a study of the performance of social indicators during the supercycle that concluded that the poverty gap between urban and rural populations has increased in all countries.  (The report is available in English and Spanish.)  In Peru and Chile, the gap increased more in territories where extractive territories are located, while in Colombia, Bolivia, and Ecuador less so.  The gap between indigenous and non-indigenous populations increased only in extractive territories in Ecuador, decreasing in both extractive and non-extractive settings in the rest of the countries considered.  Regarding gender, in all five countries the gap between men and women increased slightly in non-extractive territories and decreased a bit more in extractive ones.

This report establishes correlations between the increase in extractive activities, the availability of extractive rents, and patterns of inequality reflected in social indicators, but it does not establish a causal relation between such variables.  For example, the data show that urban populations in Peru’s extractive regions have benefited more than rural ones – which some very preliminary research shows is probably because urban centers provide extractive projects with the goods and services they need, while less sophisticated rural areas do not.  At the same time, rural populations have to compete with the extractive projects for those same urban goods and services, and with local governments for the labor force that the public sector contracts to develop infrastructure projects that are paid for through increased revenues delivered by the extractive sector.  This is what we have called the “Cholo Disease.”  A variation of the “Dutch Disease,” it reflects a loss of competitiveness resulting not from large exports of raw materials causing the currency to appreciate, but rather from increases in the cost of labor and of urban goods and services consumed by campesinos.  However, a more definitive explanation regarding exactly how this happens in Peru and in other countries certainly needs further research.

While our data clearly show the impact of mining and hydrocarbons extraction and the resulting expenditure of extractive rents on the poverty gaps between urban and rural populations, men and women, and indigenous and non-indigenous populations, further investigation into the causes and consequences is needed.  The end of the supercycle has already meant a fall in growth rates and extractive revenues, leading to a worrisome rebound in poverty rates.  We are still unable to answer, however, the question of how broadly it will impact the substantial segments of Latin America’s population that emerged from poverty but remains in a vulnerable position – and how it will aggravate poverty gaps among individuals and between groups in extractive and non-extractive territories.

May 16, 2017

* Carlos Monge is Latin America Director at the Natural Resource Governance Institute in Lima.

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by clalsstaff on May 16, 2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on May 16, 2017

https://aulablog.net/2017/05/16/who-really-benefited-from-the-commodities-supercycle-and-who-loses-with-its-end/

Latin America: End of “Supercycle” Threatens Reversal of Institutional Reforms

By Carlos Monge*

Monge graphic

By Eduardo Ballón and Raúl Molina (consultores) and Claudia Viale and Carlos Monge (National Resource Governance Institute, América Latina), from Minería y marcos institucionales en la región andina. El superciclo y su legado, o las difíciles relaciones entre políticas de promoción de la inversión minero-hidrocarburífera y las reformas institucionales, Reporte de Investigación preparado por NRGI con colaboración de la GIZ, Lima, Marzo del 2017. See blog text for high-resolution graphic

Policies adopted in response to the end of the “supercycle” have slowed and, in some cases, reversed the reforms that moved the region toward greater decentralization, citizen participation, and environmental protection over the past decade.  Latin American governments of the left and right used the commodities supercycle to drive growth and poverty reduction at an unprecedented pace.  They also undertook institutional reforms aimed at improving governance at large.

  • Even before demand and prices for Latin American energy and minerals began to rise in the early 2000s, some Latin American countries launched processes of decentralization (Colombia and Bolivia); started to institutionalize mechanisms for citizens’ participation in decision making (Colombia and Bolivia); and built progressively stronger environmental management frameworks (Colombia and Ecuador). Peru pressed ahead with decentralization and participation at the start of the supercycle, and when it was in full swing, created a Ministry of the Environment.
  • Implementation of the reforms was subordinated by governments’ overarching goal of fostering investments in the extractive sector. Indigenous consultation rights in Peru, for example, were approved in the second half of 2011, but implementation was delayed a year and limited only to indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin.  President Ollanta Humala, giving in to the mining lobby, claimed there were no indigenous peoples in the Andes and that no consultations were needed around mining projects.  Local pressure forced a reversal, and by early 2015 four consultation projects on mid-size mining projects were launched.

These reformist policies have suffered setbacks since the decrease in Asia’s and particularly China’s appetite for Latin American energy and minerals has caused prices to fall – and the value of exports, taxes, and royalties, and public incomes along with them.  The latest ECLAC data show a decline in economic growth and a rebound of poverty both in absolute and relative figures.  The gradual fall in the price of minerals starting in 2013 and the abrupt collapse in oil prices by the end of 2015 reversed this generally favorable trend.

The response of the governments of resource-dependent countries has been “race to the bottom” policies, which included steps backward in fiscal, social, and environmental policies.  Governments’ bigger concern has been to foster investments in the new and more adverse circumstances.  In this new scenario, the processes of decentralization, participation, and environmental management have been negatively impacted as local authorities and citizens’ participation – as well as environmental standards and protocols – are perceived by companies and rent-seeking public officials as obstacles to investments.

  • Peru’s Law 30230 in 2014, for example, reduced income tax rates, weakened the oversight capacity of the Ministry of the Environment, and weakened indigenous peoples’ claim public lands.

The correlation between the supercycle years and the progress and regressions in reforms is clear. (click here for high-resolution graphic).  During the supercycle – when huge amounts of money were to be made – companies and government were willing to incorporate the cost of citizen participation, decentralization and environmental standards and protocols.  But now, governments are desperate for new investments to overcome the fall in economic growth and extractive rents, and extractive companies are not willing any more to assume these additional costs.  Those who oppose the “race to the bottom strategy” are fighting hard to restore the reforms and to move ahead with decentralization, increased participation, and enhanced environmental management, to achieve a new democratic governance of the territories and the natural resources they contain.

April 7, 2017

* Carlos Monge is Latin America Director at the Natural Resource Governance Institute in Lima.

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by clalsstaff on April 7, 2017  •  Permalink
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Posted by clalsstaff on April 7, 2017

https://aulablog.net/2017/04/07/latin-america-end-of-supercycle-threatens-reversal-of-institutional-reforms/

Bolivia’s Remarkable Political Stability

By Miguel Centellas*

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Political slogans in support of Bolivian President Evo Morales and his MAS party (Movement for Socialism), calling for “500 more years” of their rule. / Francoise Gaujour / Flickr / Creative Commons

In the 11 years since he was first elected president of Bolivia, Evo Morales has delivered remarkable stability and progress even though his drive for power still concerns many opponents.  Along with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, he was labelled by some observers as part of the “irresponsible” or “populist” left – in contrast to more “social democratic” leftists like Brazil’s Lula da Silva or Chile’s Michelle Bachelet.  The “populists” were also widely criticized for weakening and playing loose with democratic institutions and for authoritarian practices associated with the region’s caudillo legacy.  But Morales’ course has neither followed Venezuela’s, whose populist regime lies in ruins with no clear exit strategy; nor Ecuador’s, which looks set to accept a peaceful transition of power to the opposition later this year.  Bolivia appears to have reached a sort of political equilibrium.

  • Despite charged economic rhetoric and his championing of leftist socioeconomic policies, Morales has pursued prudent, conservative macroeconomic policies. Bolivia has carefully increased its reserves from a little over $3 billion in 2006 to more than $15 billion by 2014.  As of 2015 reserves amounted to 40 percent of GDP.  At the same time, the GDP has grown from just over $8 billion in 2000 to nearly $33 billion by 2015, with GDP per capita (PPP) nearly doubling from $3,497 to $6,954 in the same time span.
  • Morales’s signature socioeconomic reforms borrow from the “responsible” leftist models, rather than the vertical chavista model. He has created cash transfer programs similar to those used successfully in Mexico and Brazil.  These bonos, including some created by Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, provide unconditional cash for pensions, pre- and post-natal care, and education.  While this spending pales in comparison to “megaprojects” such as highways and soccer stadiums, it goes directly to Bolivian households – with obvious political benefit for the Morales government and clear, direct benefits to average Bolivians.
  • The new constitution adopted in 2009 – a product of compromise between Morales and the regionalist opposition – radically decentralized state structure, satisfying opponents’ desire for significant space at the local level. The eastern lowland regionalist opposition can regularly count on winning governorships in Santa Cruz, Beni, and Tarija, while middle-class, liberal opponents win in the major cities of La Paz, Cochabamba, Potosí, and now even El Alto.  This diffuses political conflicts and prevents the consolidation of unified opposition.  Conflict between the central state and regionalists continues, but it has become routinized and therefore has stabilized.
  • The electoral court, elevated to be a “branch” of government in the 2009 constitution, has remained largely impartial, maintained its political independence, and significantly improved its capabilities – increasing Bolivians’ trust in the legitimacy of elections. A referendum last year, rejecting a constitutional reform that would allow Morales to run for another term in 2019, was managed competently and (for the most part) fairly.

Not all is well, however.  Despite losing the referendum, Morales and his MAS party made clear that he intends to find a way to run for reelection yet again in 2019.  The opposition’s concerns about his authoritarian tendencies are not wholly exaggerated.  Indeed, the government frequently lashes out at its perceived enemies in ways that go well beyond the niceties of democratic adversarial politics.  Likewise, there are clear signs that corruption remains deeply rooted within the government.  But none of this contradicts what seems obvious: The MAS government has brought relative prosperity and stability – even fueling optimism that if (or when) it steps down, its transition may be more like the one that Ecuador appears likely to experience later this year than the meltdown that is tearing apart Venezuela.

March 23, 2017

* Miguel Centellas teaches political sociology at the University of Mississippi’s Croft Institute for International Studies and has written extensively on Bolivian electoral and subnational politics.  He also co-directs an interdisciplinary summer field school based in La Paz.

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Can Latin America Escape the Middle-Income Trap?

By Rick Doner and Ben Ross Schneider*

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Photo Credit: Inter-American Development Bank / CLALS / Edited 

Most literature on the “middle-income trap,” widely understood as a core obstacle to sustained development in Latin America, focuses solely on economic dynamics and understates the importance and challenges of political coalition-building.  That literature, largely generated by economists in academe and international financial institutions, argues convincingly that in Latin America, as well as Southeast Asia, once countries achieve some degree of success in economic development, they get stuck.  They are unable to compete with low-cost producers in traditional sectors – initial development success brings higher wages and other costs – while they also have failed to gain the capacity to compete with developed economies in frontier industries, where technological capabilities and productivity levels are far higher.  These analysts stress that Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico – or for that matter Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand – need to build on their achievements over the past half century in order to make the leap into the ranks of the world’s most prosperous nations.  They highlight the trap’s proximate origins in productivity slowdowns and recommend policy solutions that focus on improving human capital through investment in education and vocational training.  But identifying problems and potential solutions does not explain why leaders fail to adopt the solutions.  In other words, it’s not clear from existing writings why the trap is actually a trap.

The literature does not acknowledge that fundamental political obstacles, especially lack of effective demand and pressure for these solutions, are at the heart of the problem.  As is evident from the history of failed programs to improve education and R&D, political will to invest in such public goods is in short supply.  Politicians are rarely willing to forgo the short-term political benefits of satisfying entrenched interest groups for the long-term developmental benefits of creating institutions capable of helping the broader citizenry to upgrade its capacity for technology absorption.  A core reason for this lack of political will is the weakness of the societal constituencies that might demand the necessary policies and effective institutions.  Our research indicates that relations among key societal actors in middle-income countries are less amenable to building the consensus that economists advocate. In a recent article, we argue that the same conditions that facilitated or accompanied movement to middle-income status – such as foreign investment, low-skilled and low-paid work, inequality, and informality – have generated political cleavages that impede upgrading policies and the construction of institutions necessary to implement them.  This fragmentation is why the trap is a trap. Three lines of fragmentation are key:

  • Big business is divided between foreign and domestic firms. The former can undertake productivity-improving measures in-house and/or at their home headquarters, whereas local firms tend to focus in non-tradeable services and commodities whose demand for better training and R&D is lower than in manufacturing.
  • Labor is fractured between formal and large, growing informal sectors. Enjoying longer job tenure and on-the-job training for specific skills, formal workers have little interest in broader skills development.  Informal workers, on the other hand, constantly shift jobs and would prefer investments in vocational institutions offering general training.
  • These societies remain overall less equal and, as is now well known, inequality undermines the will and capacity to provide broad public goods such as quality universal education and support for technology development.

 Pro-growth coalitions of various types have been key to productivity improvements in now-high income East Asian countries, such as Korea and Taiwan.  The fact that these countries had stronger (and more autocratic) governments does not preclude developing or building on such coalitions in countries with messier political systems and weaker bureaucracies.  First, leaders can build on sectoral pockets of high productivity, such as aquaculture in Chile, wine in Argentina (and rubber in Malaysia).  Second, international and regional institutions can help supplement demands for skills by supporting programs that focus on technical and vocational institutions that actually meet and are linked to employers’ needs.  Third, organizations such as the ILO can promote business associations that represent the local firms for whom collective technical training and R&D are especially important.

August 22, 2016

* Rick Doner and Ben Ross Schneider teach political science at Emory University and MIT, respectively.

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by clalsstaff on August 22, 2016  •  Permalink
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Can Latin America Achieve Fiscally Sustainable and Egalitarian Social Citizenship?

By Fernando Filgueira*

Uncertain Future

Photo Credit: Jan Tik / Flickr / Creative Commons

Latin America is undergoing a profound transformation of its social policies and of the very concept of social citizenship, but the outcome of this process is far from certain.  Electoral democracy, urbanization, increased educational attainment, and increased exposure to new and broader consumption patterns have destroyed the political foundations for conservative modernization.  The turn of the century has witnessed advances in social outcomes and public policies that for the first time provide a true window of opportunity for achieving more productive and egalitarian societies.

  • Decreasing poverty, lower income inequality, improved and expanded employment, and access to transfers and services to popular sectors were made possible by five critical factors: booming prices for Latin American commodities fueled economic growth and employment; stable prices – a positive legacy of the Washington Consensus era – meant that wages and transfers were not undermined by inflation; increased state fiscal capacity and commitment to social policy enabled a doubling in 15 years of real social per-capita expenditure; a demographic dividend, when combined (the young and the elderly) dependency ratios are lowest as a percentage of the population; and improved education access, completion, and credentials, which facilitated enhanced opportunity and increased productivity.

Yet these five advantages will lose steam in the next couple of decades.  Growth will wither as the commodity boom ends and expansionary monetary policy is limited.  Most Latin American economies are facing increased inflationary pressures. Existing tax structures and in some cases productivity levels will not permit social expenditure to increase at the rate of the last 15 years.  The easy phase of the demographic transition (when dependency rates are going down) is or will be over in most countries towards 2025.  Some countries in the region will face the European dilemma of an aging population, but they will do so with a lower GDP per-capita, weaker fiscal capacities of states, and a significantly more unequal income distribution.  While the soft targets of expanded education – primary school and expansion of lower middle school – have been achieved, the tough ones remain: extended coverage in early childhood, completion of high school, quality improvement, and true reduction of inequality of outcome in learning.

  • Five fault lines in Latin American social regimes make these problems a major threat to the sustainability of both social and economic development. A) Women’s incorporation into the labor market remains low (50 percent) and is highly stratified.  B) The absence of a robust state-led care system for early childhood and the persistence of a patriarchal distribution of care burdens undermines a route to development that is both more efficient and egalitarian.  C) Stark contrasts between insiders and outsiders in informal and formal labor markets and access to social protection and cash transfer  systems contribute to an expansionary monetary and fiscal policy that mainly benefits insiders unwilling to be taxed for redistributional public and collective goods and insurance. D) The region’s middle class and new emergent class, moreover, are not willing to increase taxation, since they do not perceive the quality of public goods and collective social services as adequate. And E) the pattern of fertility shows some of the worst patterns in social terms, including that most biological reproduction is left to the poor: Latin American governments do not equalize opportunity early on and through the educational system – which in the most unequal region of the world with diminishing but non-convergent fertility rates – leads to a productivity failure since underinvesting in the poor is underinvesting in the frontier of productivity enhancement.

These challenges will condition the possibility of a new social citizenship and a social investment model based on robust public goods, expansion of merit goods, and universality of entitlements.  It is not enough that elites are no longer able to control the political and economic game through status enclosure and authoritarianism.  In order to craft truly universal social policies conducive to providing inclusion for all, societies must confront narrow corporatism and restricted targeting – and the political economy they sustain.  Contributory models based on formal wages and targeted social policies based on need will not disappear, but they have to take a back seat to a model of basic universalism where access to quality public and collective goods is truly universal, and entitlements in transfers and services are not dependent on need or labor formality.  There have been important advances, such as a marked increase in non-contributory systems of cash transfers in terms of pensions and child-family transfers, but the commodity boom and the rise of the emergent and middle classes that drove them are not permanent.  A coalition that is willing to forgo private spending power in order to enhance quality of life through collective services is needed.  Such a coalition is made conceivable by these political, economic, and social epochal changes, but it is by no means guaranteed.  If reforms do not make it a reality, the promise will be shattered, and the pendulum between failed populism, with state-led “Robin Hood” incorporation attempts, and a technocratic closure of democracy and state bashing, will remain the central and tragic dynamic of the region.**

July 18, 2016

*Fernando Filgueira is a Senior Resarcher at the Centro de Información y Estudios del Uruguay (CIESU) and Collaborating Researcher the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.  He is a member of the International Panel for Social Progress led by Amartya Sen.

**Read the full version of this essay, which is based on research done for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and for EUROsociAL on social policy, labor dynamics, and demographic change.

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by clalsstaff on July 18, 2016  •  Permalink
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