noviembre 17, 2022
Autor: WID.world

What’s new about inequality in Latin America?

WID.world released its 2022 annual inequality data update for Latin America.

Inequality remains very high in the region and is underestimated in measures based solely on survey data. New post-tax national income series describe lower levels of concentration than their pretax counterparts in all cases. Only in a few countries are the trends different. We find that both outcomes are mainly driven by the dynamics of in-kind public transfers, as opposed to the incidence of monetary redistribution, i.e., the subtraction of taxes and addition of monetary transfers, which in many cases end up increasing inequality given the prevailing regressiveness of the tax systems in the region and their dependence on indirect taxation. The inclusion of new data and improvement of earlier treatment of the pretax series result in marginal changes to trends and levels, as compared to the previous update.

Link to Issue Brief by Ignacio Flores and coauthors.

Link to the Working Paper providing details on data series and methods.

Contact WID.world’s Latin America coordinator for any question about the data and the region: ignacio.flores@psemail.eu

For other media enquiries you can contact: press@wid.world