Revealing the Diversity and Complexity behind Long-Term Income Inequality in Latin America: 1920–2011

Abstract

This paper analyzes and documents a new long-term income inequality series for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela based on dynamic social tables with four occupational groups. This enables the calculation of comparable Overall (four groups) and Labor Ginis (three groups) with their between- and within-group components. The main findings are the absence of a unique inequality pattern over time; country outcomes characterized by trajectory diversity and level divergence during industrialization and by commonality and convergence post-1980; the occurrence of inequality-leveling episodes with different timing and length; and significant changes in trends, but also evidence indicating persistence. The income-inequality dataset is included as supplementary material.