Declining inequality in Bolivia: How and Why

Jonathan Fortun Vargas

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Latin America has often been depicted as one of the most unequal regions in the world. However, after the rising of inequality, the figure decline dramatically starting from the year 2000. In this setting, Bolivia has been one of the poorest performers on income distribution efforts, lately, this situation has been improving. The author investigates the dynamics of this change through an analysis of household level surveys for 4 different years (2003/04, 2005, 2008 and 2009). The research applies a method of inequality decomposition– as developed by (Fields, 2003)-, this technique consists on regressing the expenditure of households against a vector of explanatory variables. The results suggest that education (more than other variables) has contributed on the reduction of inequality in Bolivia. Moreover, the sources of inequality are mainly attributed to the differences on human capital accumulation more than any other variables, such as the gender of the household head or the ethnical origin of the household. The results are in line with similar work made by other authors on the same issue (Gray-Molina, et al., 2001; Gray Molina &Yañez, 2009)

Keywords: Economic Development; Inequality; Income Distribution; Bolivia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I32 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-lam
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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