Labor Markets in Latin America: A Supply-Side Story
IDB-OCE Working Paper No. 374
85 Pages Posted: 25 Apr 2000
There are 2 versions of this paper
Labor Markets in Latin America: A Supply-Side Story
Labor Markets in Latin America: A Supply-Side Story
Date Written: September 1998
Abstract
One of the main concerns of Latin Americans today is the lack of adequate employment opportunities. This concern is based on the widespread perception that not enough employment is being generated, and that few individuals have access to well- remunerated jobs. This work asks whether there is a supply-side story to be told about these outcomes. We present stylized facts about the connection between the demographic transition and changes in education (the size and quality of the labor force), with labor supply, inequality, and unemployment. The main conclusion is that demographics and education significantly improve our understanding on the overall decline in employment, the changing pattern of unemployment, and the rise in wage inequality. By adding them to the demand and institutional factors behind these outcomes, we obtain a clearer picture about labor markets in Latin America. Although demographics and education move slowly through time and have a strong inertial component, there is still a wide scope for policies that move these variables in a direction that produced better labor market outcomes.
JEL Classification: D3, J10, O54, I21
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Labor Markets in Latin America: A Supply-Side Story
By Suzanne Duryea and Miguel Székely
-
The Slippery Slope: Explaining the Increase in Extreme Poverty in Urban Brazil, 1976-96
-
Ties that Bind: Employment Protection and Labor Market Outcomes in Latin America
By Carmen Pages and Gustavo A. Marquez
-
Persistent Poverty and Excess Inequality: Latin America, 1970-1995
By Juan Luis Londoño and Miguel Székely
-
Children's Advancement Through School in Brazil: the Role of Transitory Shocks to Household Income
-
Trade and Employment: Evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean
By Carmen Pages and Gustavo A. Marquez
-
Intergenerational Schooling Mobility and Macro Conditions and Schooling Policies in Latin America
By Nancy Birdsall, Jere Behrman, ...
-
Household Savings and Income Distribution in Mexico
By Orazio Attanasio and Miguel Székely