Table 8. Redistributive effect of budget operations in OECD (2005) and Latin
America, around 2000s
Source: compilation on Cetrangolo and Gomez Sabaini (2006) for OECD, and CEPAL (2005) for the
Latin American countries. Note: The Gini in the table refer to the distribution of private and
public income.
Social assistance
During the last 15 years, the region has experienced a profound
change in its social protection systems, i.e. away from social
insurance for the relatively few employed in the formal sector and
little spending on social assistance, and towards a better financed
social assistance (Barrientos and Santibanez 2009). The new
emphasis on social assistance (which continues to be supported by
social insurance in the slowly expanding formal sector) has entailed
the development of large scale programs focusing on poverty
reduction and including three main types of interventions: i.e.
unconditional income transfers such as non-contributory pensions;
conditional transfers (such as most of those listed in Table 9); and
integrated anti-poverty programs (such as Chile Solidario).
Contrary to the small, donor dependent, poorly sequenced and
targeted Social Emergency and Investment Funds introduced to
soften the resistance to structural adjustment in the late 1980s
(Cornia 2001), the new social assistance transfers are better funded
by the state (with programs absorbing up to 0.5 to one percent of
GDP), and cover a considerably greater share of the population at
risk (Table 9). Such programs are directed to new political