inequality only if additional jobs are created. In this regard, an
IPEA study (cited in CEPAL 2006) decomposed the fall in
inequality observed in Brazil between 2000 and 2006 and
concluded that two thirds of the decline was due to a fall in
labor incomes inequality caused by a drop in educational
inequality among workers and in wage premium by education level.
2.D. Recent policy approaches
Latin America has been for long a symbol of authoritarian political
systems, unequal distribution of assets, and limited redistribution by
the state. However, during the last twenty years, the political
landscape has been dominated by a steady drive towards
democratization and, starting from the mid-late 1990s, a steady shift
in political orientation towards LOC regimes. As documented by the
results of different waves of the Latinobarometro^48 , such shift was to a
large extent, explained by growing frustration with the poor results of
the Washington Consensus policies implemented in the 1980s and
1990s. Among other things, such policies caused a shrinkage of the
industrial working class, a weakening of the unions, rising
unemployment, and a substantial enlargement of informal sector
and self-employment. The shift away from such approach began
with the election in 1990 of the centrist Patricio Alwyn in Chile, but
intensified in the 2000s (Table 3). Figure 5 shows that in mid-2009,
of the 18 Latin American countries analyzed, only three countries
(including Colombia and Mexico) were run by centre-right
governments.
(^48) Corporación Latinobarómetro is a non-profit NGO based in Santiago, Chile.
Since 1995 it carries out public polls on economic and political topics by means
of sample surveys of 19,000 households based in 18 countries of Latin America
accounting for 400 million people (http://www.latinobarometro.org).