The Inter-American Dialogue’s First Social Policy Brief

We are pleased to share with you the Inter-American Dialogue’s first Social Policy Brief, “How Poor and Unequal is Latin America and the Caribbean?” by Jeffrey Puryear and Mariellen Malloy Jewers. The brief draws on a rich array of sources to identify a set of basic facts about of poverty and inequality in Latin America. It describes the region’s extraordinary concentration of income at the top of the income scale, and its absence at the bottom—setting Latin America apart from every other region of the developing world. The brief concludes that, despite modest recent progress, Latin America remains far from finding an effective strategy for reducing poverty and inequality. It is the first in a series of policy briefs that will target key issues on the region’s social agenda.

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