Understand the aspects of Development and inequality of human development

Throughout this work, four aspects of the economic history of Latin America have been discussed with special emphasis. The first has been the achievements in development, with their chiaroscuro on the international comparative level. The second aspect has been that of economic instability, associated with its forms of international specialization, where natural resources still predominate, and unstable access to international financing. The third has been the slow gestation of modern political and economic institutions and the great variations in economic policies and development models that have accompanied them. The fourth is that of inequality, a field in which Latin America presents more serious problems than other regions. Let's recap the links between these aspects and understand what Bring me the news states.

Development and inequality

There is no doubt that the region has advanced in its development. This is reflected in the advance of per capita production, the improvement in human development indicators and the reduction in poverty levels. But this process has been uneven over time and across regional geography.

The periodization that is been used in this book helps to analyze the rhythms of this process throughout the two centuries analyzed.

Four main phases are distinguished:

(1) the decades after the independence of the majority of the countries;

(2) the primary-exporter development phase within the framework of the so-called first globalization, which covers the last decades of the 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th century;

(3) state-led industrialization, which is framed between two major crises: the Great Depression of the 1930s and the “lost decade” of the 1980s; and

(4) the stage of market reforms since the 1980s, which coincides internationally with the second globalization. Given the diversity of Latin America,

In general terms, the first phase was one of regression in relation to what is today the industrialized world, although of advance in relation to the bulk of the regions that today are considered part of the developing world. The last phase was also one of relative retreat, now not only with the industrialized world, but also with respect to the world average and, especially, to the developing countries of Asia.

On the contrary, during the primary-exporter development phase, Latin America was, together with central and southern Europe, one of the regions on the periphery of the world economy that managed to enter the process of economic growth earlier, which it turned her into a kind of "middle class" of the world. During state-led industrialization, the Latin American economy continued to grow faster than average and increase its share in world production.

In social matters, progress lagged further. The pitiful state of education at the beginning of the 20th century, even in the countries that led regional development, is a proof of this. Human development indicators began to improve towards the third decade of the twentieth century and had their greatest advances during the stage of industrialization led by the State and have shown during the phases of economic reforms a stagnation in relation to the industrialized world, although with a continued advance in education. In terms of poverty reduction, the greatest advances during the 20th century occurred again during state-led industrialization. After a quarter of a century (and not just a decade) lost in this matter starting in the 1980s, What is most promising is the substantial progress in poverty reduction between 2002 and 2008, which coincided with an improvement in income distribution in a broad set of countries. Existing data, still incomplete, indicate that these improvements have generally been maintained in more recent years.