Introduction: Population Growth and the Debate on Income and Human Capital Inequality in the Americas in the Long Run—A Comparative Analysis

Enriqueta Camps-Cura

Chapter Chapter 1 in Changes in Population, Inequality and Human Capital Formation in the Americas in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 2019, pp 1-7 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract In this introductory chapter, we introduce the most relevant bibliography on the main questions regarding income inequality and human capital in the Americas in the long run, as well as the demographic trends of the period outlined in Chapter 4 . The chapter deals with the very different origins and evolution of income and human capital inequality in Latin America with respect to North America, specially the United States. A lot of available information dates the origins of Latin American inequality in the colonial period (Engerman and Sokoloff 2012; Acemoglu et al. 2011; Acemoglu and Robinson 2012; Berola and O’Campo 2013). Iberian colonizers dealt with the distribution of production factors in South America in a more unequal way than North European colonizers in North America. But Williamson (2010, 2015) argue on a different perspective stressing that levels on income per capita in Latin America were too low to allow for high levels of inequality.

Keywords: Inequality; Human capital; Colonial origins; Great Leveling; Comparative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-030-21351-0_1

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-21351-0_1

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