Inequality and Growth: Patterns and Policy

Abstract

Latin America often is singled out because of its high and persistent income inequality. With a Gini coefficient of 0.53 in the mid-2000s,¹ Latin America was 18 percent more unequal than Sub-Saharan Africa, 36 percent more unequal than East Asia and the Pacific, and 65 percent more unequal than the high-income countries (figure 1-1). However, after rising in the 1990s, inequality in Latin America declined between 2000 and 2007. Of the seventeen countries for which comparable data are available, twelve experienced a decline in their Gini coefficient (figure 1-2). The average decline for the twelve countries was 1.1 percent a