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Income Distribution and the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Richard Weisskoff
Richard Weisskoff*
Affiliation:
Graduate School of International Studies, University of Miami (Coral Gables, FL)
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Extract

The Issue of the Distribution of income is once again emerging as a critical component in the debates regarding Latin America's development path in the 1990s and as a factor underlying the proposed Enterprise of the Americas Initiative (EAI). I will argue that the degree of income inequality in the Latin American societies will prove to be an obvious, if unnoticed, obstacle to social progress which will affect the operation and outcome of the Initiative. In this essay, I review some of the hypotheses and recent findings from the research on income distribution. I shall contrast the conditions of the growth decades of the 1960s and 1970s with the “lost” decade of the 1980s. What have we learned, and what have we avoided learning during these years? How many of the initial conditions which the Alliance for Progress aimed at remedying 30 years ago are still with us?

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , Winter 1991 , pp. 111 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1991

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