We investigate the factors driving Bolivia’s success in reducing inequality and poverty during the last 15 years. Our evidence suggests that the reduction was driven mainly by labor income growth at the bottom end of the income distribution. Increases in non-labor income (rents, transfers, remittances) also played a role, but a smaller one, although the introduction of Renta Dignidad has made a big difference for the elderly poor. Labor income increases were concentrated in the informal, low-skilled service and manufacturing sectors. As the gains from the commodity boom go into reverse, and the fiscal envelope becomes much tighter, it will be essential that labor and social policies are well designed and targeted to preserve the poverty and inequality reduction of the last 15 years.

We investigate the factors driving Bolivia's success in reducing inequality and poverty during the last 15 years. Our evidence suggests that the reduction was driven mainly by labor income growth at the bottom end of the income distribution. Increases in non-labor income (rents, transfers, remittances) also played a role, but a smaller one, although the introduction of Renta Dignidad has made a big difference for the elderly poor. Labor income increases were concentrated in the informal, low-skilled service and manufacturing sectors. As the gains from the commodity boom go into reverse, and the fiscal envelope becomes much tighter, it will be essential that labor and social policies are well designed and targeted to preserve the poverty and inequality reduction of the last 15 years.--Abstract.

We investigate the factors driving Bolivia’s success in reducing inequality and poverty during the last 15 years. Our evidence suggests that the reduction was driven mainly by labor income growth at the bottom end of the income distribution. Increases in non-labor income (rents, transfers, remittances) also played a role, but a smaller one, although the introduction of Renta Dignidad has made a big difference for the elderly poor. Labor income increases were concentrated in the informal, low-skilled service and manufacturing sectors. As the gains from the commodity boom go into reverse, and the fiscal envelope becomes much tighter, it will be essential that labor and social policies are well designed and targeted to preserve the poverty and inequality reduction of the last 15 years.

Fueled by the ongoing debate about the distributive effects of the Washington Consensus, the dynamics of poverty and inequality have returned to the center of attention of academic scholars, policymakers, and the public at large. The main obstacles to analyzing this issue are incomplete income and consumption data in developing countries. Hence, the book presents a new dynamic cross-survey microsimulation methodology and applies it to generate the database for a detailed case study on Bolivia during the era of structural reforms. Building upon this database, the dynamics of different dimensions of poverty and inequality in 1989 - 2002 are analyzed with various microeconomic tools. The empirical results suggest that in the case of Bolivia the impact of the Washington Consensus has neither lived up to the expectations of its proponents nor to the fears of its critics.

Reducing poverty and increasing wellbeing in developing countries have become central aims of both the national policy-makers as well as the international community. With the Millennium Development Declaration of 2000, the international community has agreed to focus on poverty reduction and the reduction of deprivation in its many dimensions. This book investigates conceptual and empirical issues on the measurement of trends in wellbeing, poverty, and inequality, illustrated for Bolivia and Colombia. The book contributes significantly to filling data gaps by combining existing data in a new way. Furthermore, it presents an important step forward to focus more on multidimensional outcomes of wellbeing rather than on monetary inputs and to develop tools to monitor the progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Over the past decades, inequality has risen not just in advanced economies but also in many emerging market and developing economies, becoming one of the key global policy challenges. And throughout the 20th century, Latin America was associated with some of the world’s highest levels of inequality. Yet something interesting happened in the first decade and a half of the 21st century. Latin America was the only region in the World to have experienced significant declines in inequality in that period. Poverty also fell in Latin America, although this was replicated in other regions, and Latin America started from a relatively low base. Starting around 2014, however, and even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, poverty and inequality gains had already slowed in Latin America and, in some cases, gone into reverse. And the COVID-19 shock, which is still playing out, is likely to dramatically worsen short-term poverty and inequality dynamics. Against this background, this departmental paper investigates the link between commodity prices, and poverty and inequality developments in Latin America.