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on Central and South America |
| By: | Morgan, Marc; Souza, Pedro |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a novel assessment of the Kuznets curve for an underdeveloped country engaging in rapid late development. We mobilize new long-run data for Brazil, combining surveys, administrative records, and national accounts statistics, to compute macro-consistent income shares and other distributional indicators since the 1920s. Our estimates show a more nuanced picture for the traditional Kuznets hypothesis than what the existing literature has suggested. The major complication for the standard narrative lies in the period roughly between 1950 and 1964, for which existing estimates are either too infrequent, not disaggregated enough, or incomplete to be able to offer a coherent analysis. Given the political and institutional changes that followed, we argue that this period holds the key to what we term the Kuznets curse —the tendency in late-developing countries, according to Kuznets, for endogenous social conflicts linked to rapid structural change to be resolved by authoritarian regimes that ensure adherence to the high-savers accumulation model. We explain the political economy of the Kuznets curse through a narrative approach that combines structuralist development economics with a neorealist approach to institutional change, making use of public discourses and debates among policy-makers and intellectual elites. |
| Keywords: | Distribution, Late development, Political economy, Kuznets, Brazil |
| JEL: | D31 D33 E64 J31 N36 O1 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gnv:wpaper:unige:185943 |
| By: | Adrienne M. Lucas; Patrick J. McEwan; David Torres Irribarra |
| Abstract: | Since 1991, Chile has provided large, renewable cash grants to indigenous children in lower-income households, conditional on school enrollment. We estimate intent-to-treat effects of grant exposure on indigenous adults and their children, leveraging variation in expected grant exposure across birth cohorts and never-treated adults, and using fixed effects to absorb unobserved variables shared by adults born in the same year and community. Cohorts with the greatest exposure had 0.6 more years of schooling, 10% more hours worked, and 22% higher labor earnings, reducing pre-treatment ethnic differences. Mothers’ exposure increased their children’s early-grade test scores and reduced second-generation grant receipt. |
| JEL: | I24 I28 I38 O10 O15 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33798 |
| By: | García-Suaza, Andres; Caiza-Guamán, Pamela; Sarango-Iturralde, Alexander; Romero-Torres, Bernardo; Buitrago, Catalina |
| Abstract: | The green transition represents one of the most significant transformational forces in the labor market in the coming years. This paper analyzes the incidence of green jobs in four Latin American countries using information from job vacancy data. The results reveal a low incidence of demand for jobs with green potential or for new and emerging occupations related to the green transition. Such occupations are characterized by requiring high levels of education and offer a significant wage premium. These results highlight the main challenge of the green transition, which lies in the need to implement training processes, while revealing opportunities for the creation of high-quality jobs in the region. |
| Keywords: | Labor demand, green jobs, green transition, climate change, skills |
| JEL: | J24 J62 Q52 Q58 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1625 |