Bulmer-Thomas V., Coatsworth J., Cortes-Conde R. The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America: Volume 2, The Long Twentieth Century
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642 Miguel Sz
´
ekely and Andr
´
es Montes
50
100
150
200
250
1965
68701 4 791 4 7 90
1
Year
4
LAC, 1996
LAC, 1980
Capital per worker
world endowment
7
9236
5
8
80 3256
89 2
3
5
Figure 14.18.Effective world capital endowments.
Sources: Data for 1965–92 are reproduced from Antonio Spilimbergo, Juan Luis Londo
˜
no,
and Miguel Sz
´
ekely, “Income Distribution, Factor Endowments and Trade Openness”;
1992–7 data are authors’ calculations using the same methodology and updated data
sources.
shows that the world’s effective endowment of this factor increased steadily
from 1965 to 1980, and remained fairly stable thereafter with the entry of
additional (capital-scarce) countries into the arena of international trade.
Latin America had an effectiveendowment that was below the world average
around the 1980s (indicating that the factor was relatively scarce in the
region, and earning high returns), but by the second half of the 1990s, the
region’s endowment was almost identical to the average world endowment.
As with human capital, the proposed explanation for persistently high
levels of inequality in Latin America is that it had the right endowment
at the wrong time. Had the region been more open to trade during the
1980s, presumably capital flows would have been attracted by the region’s
high returns, eventually reducing the “excess” returns to capital that are
typical of semiclosed economies. The window of opportunity to reap the
distributional benefits was missed because by the time the region opened
to trade in the 1990s, its endowment of physical capital no longer provided
the same advantages.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has summarized evidence on the persistence of poverty and
inequality in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century.
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Poverty and Inequality 643
This feature of the region seems to have been present for a long time, perhaps
for all of the modern history of the countries in the region.
Here we have argued that there are three long-run underlying reasons
for the high levels of poverty and inequality: the accumulation of income-
earning assets (namely, human capital, physical capital, and land) has been
slow and highly unequal in relation to the population of each country;
the individuals with the lowest stocks end up using them at a lower rate
because the economic environment has provided fewer opportunities for
them, as compared to those with more assets; and the price that is paid in
the market for putting assets to work depends, among other factors, on the
size of the stock one can offer. In sum, the individuals with greater stocks
of income-earning assets have been able to obtain higher incomes not only
because they have more assets, but because by having more assets, they
have had more chances to use them productively, and they have received a
higher return for each unit of asset owned.
In turn, this unfortunate combination is attributable to a mix of two
critical factors. The first is policy. Latin America followed an import sub-
stitution industrialization strategy for at least three decades (1950s–70s),
during which the most abundant factor in the region (unskilled labor)
received relatively low returns precisely because of its relative abundance in
a closed economy. In contrast, physical capital, which was relatively scarce,
reaped the benefits by receiving high returns because of its scarcity. Dur-
ing these years, the factor endowments of the region could have resulted
in improvements in income distribution and poverty reduction had the
region opened up more to international markets because the returns to
unskilled labor in the international environment of the 1960s–70swould
have presumably increased with trade given that this factor of production
was relatively scarce internationally. Physical capital, which is concentrated
among the rich, would have seen its rates of return reduced in this setting,
with additional progressive effects on income distribution.
The second factor is that the world changed in significant ways during
the 1980s. On the one hand, the Latin American countries started opening
up to international trade, but at the same time, other countries did the same
and this changed the world supply of factors. With the entry of countries
such as China and India – which together are five times the size of Latin
America – into the international arena, Latin America lost attractiveness
as a region with abundance of the lowest skills and scarcity of physical
capital because these newcomers to the world scene have considerably larger
comparative advantages in these areas. At the same time, countries in East
Asia exploited their considerable strides in schooling progress, with which
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644 Miguel Sz
´
ekely and Andr
´
es Montes
they could reap the benefits of belonging to the few countries with relative
abundance of semiskilled labor. The result is that in most Latin American
countries today, relative prices of labor and capital are working against the
majority of the population: low wages for the relatively unskilled and high
returns to physical capital because of relatively small flows of this factor to
the region.
What about the future? For some time now, the Latin American region
has been “investing” in its young because approximately 40 percent of its
population was of school age, a group that is normally supported by other
household members who are of working age. However, during the first
decades of this century, the share of individuals aged nineteen years or
more will increase, and so total dependency rates will fall. The population
weight of the elderly (defined as individuals sixty-five and older) – who
are not economically active – is also increasing, so eventually the share of
“dependents” in the population will grow again.
Because of the evolution of the total dependency rate in the region, Latin
America is entering a “window of opportunity” during which the share of
the working-age population will be growing relative to the share of depen-
dents, whether young or old. This “window” represents an opportunity
because when a higher proportion of household members are of working
age, more investment per child and greater savings for retirement can be
made. However, this window will begin to close as the population ages. The
total dependency rate will rise again to its current level by approximately
2040. The region’s “window of opportunity” (defined as the years of low
dependency) will last on average for the next forty years.
37
However, the
share of the elderly is already increasing very rapidly in several countries
relative to the working-age population, and this will require a faster accu-
mulation of private or public resources in the near future to provide for
retirement and medical expenditures. Pressure on pension systems, social
security programs, and families who support elderly members will be felt
strongly within the next fifteen years in Cuba, Uruguay, and Brazil; and
within the next twenty years in Chile, Colombia, Argentina, and Costa
Rica.
37
Calculations from the population data and projections in UNESCO Statistical Yearbook (1997). Our
dependency ratios give different weights to the elderly (aged 65 or more) and to children (aged 0–19)
because it is relatively more expensive to finance the cost of supporting the elderly (i.e., because of
high medical costs) than the investment needed to support a child. To calculate the relative weights,
we compared public expenditures per capita in education and public expenditures per capita in social
security for the elderly, obtained from Inter-American Development Bank (1996). The result was
that one elderly person absorbs, on average, four times more public resources than a child.
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Poverty and Inequality 645
The “window of opportunity” is relevant for education because it pro-
vides an excellent chance for improving the quality of schooling. As the
population share of school-age children begins to decline, simply main-
taining the same tax contribution per worker and the level of overall edu-
cational spending represents more resources per student. If more resources
per child can be translated into better schooling quality, there is an oppor-
tunity for closing the education gap in the region. Similarly, if greater shares
of the population enter into working age and start saving, capital stocks
may rise and, with it, the returns to capital may decline. These are only
two of the channels by which the demographic window of opportunity
may materialize into improvements in the standard of living for the Latin
American population through changes in the factor endowments of the
region. However, the key to the future is to combine the recovery of the
“right” factor endowments with the right policies.
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646
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS
CHAPTER 1 (LUIS B
´
ERTOLA AND JEFFREY G.
WILLIAMSON)
If not a new concept, globalization is a relatively new word. In a narrow sense, not
much was written about globalization in Latin America prior to 1940.Since then,
the historical literature on globalization has boomed. Furthermore, Latin American
economic history, and work on the Latin American globalization experience in
particular, have undergone two major shifts, both in the last two decades. The
first shift has been manifested by a diminished role played by Latin American
scholars in the production of comparative and general economic histories, and
an augmented role by Anglophone scholars and editors directing big projects.
The second shift entailed a move away from dependency and developmental or
structuralist approaches toward mainstream economic theory (the new economic
history), the new institutional economics, and the new political economy. In some
cases, this new trend implied a revisionist attempt to show the achievements of
export-led growth. In others, the work looked to domestic factors in order to
explain why the benefits of globalization were not adequately exploited. Still others
incorporated the contributions made by dependency and structuralist thinking and
the new approaches in assessing the evolution of the domestic economy.
The First Shift
The publication of The Cambridge History of Latin America in the mid-1980s
initiated a change in the way general works covering the whole Latin American
region have been written. Before that date, the most outstanding works were usu-
ally written by Latin American scholars, typically in Spanish or Portuguese, and
often by social scientists and not historians. Since the mid-1980s, the main general
works on Latin America have been written in English. Leslie Bethell, ed., The
Cambridge History of Latin America,vol. 6, Latin America Since 1930:Economy,
647
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648 Bibliographical Essays
Society and Politics (Cambridge, 1994), contains two key chapters written by
Rosemary Thorp and Victor Bulmer-Thomas. These authors are responsible for
two of the most important comprehensive works that have been published since
then. Bulmer-Thomas, The Economic History of Latin America Since Independence,
2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2003)isanalytically strong and penetrating, and exploits a
dualistic model to assess the performance of different Latin American countries in
the export-led era. Rosemary Thorp, Progress, Poverty and Exclusion: An Economic
History of Latin America in the 20th Century (Inter-American Development Bank,
1998)isthe result of a research project financed by the Inter-American Develop-
ment Bank, in which more than thirty outstanding scholars were involved. The
contributions of these scholars were collected in three satellite volumes. Of special
interest for this bibliographic essay is Enrique C
´
ardenas, Jos
´
e Antonio Ocampo,
and Rosemary Thorp, eds., The Export Age: The Latin American Economies in the
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Basingstoke, 2001). The book contains
eight chapters with national studies and one on Central America. The introductory
chapter written by the three editors is an attempt to draw general features from
national and regional studies. Although the book is descriptive, the text makes
stimulating use of new institutional and political economy approaches to tackle
the different ways in which factor markets were built and the role of the state in
this process.
In short, it seems that Latin American scholars are not, by themselves, producing
as many comprehensive works on Latin American economic history (and history
in general). This kind of comparative analysis requires the leadership of editors
who can coordinate many authors; comprehensive works written by individual
English scholars were based directly (Thorp) or indirectly (Bulmer-Thomas) on
the initiative of editors promoting collective works. The present volume seems to
confirm this trend.
The Second Shift
data on gdp, real wages, prices, and living standards
The ebb independency approaches has been associatedwith the application of more
economic theory and with an enormous increase in available data. Latin America
may still lag behind in terms of the availability of reliable historical statistics, but
very impressive improvements have taken place, especially in the 1990s.
New GDP estimates and related national income statistics have been the point
of departure of a new generation of research in economic history that has served to
offer a reinterpretation of Latin American performance during the first globaliza-
tion boom. Some of the new series are as follows. Argentina:Roberto Cort
´
es Conde
and Marcela Harriague, “Estimaciones del producto bruto interno de Argentina
1875–1935”(Documento de Trabajo, Departamento de Econom
´
ıa, Universidad de
San Andr
´
es, 1994). Brazil: Claudio Contador and Claudio Haddad, “Produto
real, moeda e prec¸os: a experi
ˆ
encia brasileira no per
´
ıodo 1861–1970,” Revista
brasileira de estat
´
ıstica 36 (1975); Claudio Haddad, Ocrescimento do produto real no
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Bibliographical Essays 649
Brasil, 1900–1947 (R
´
ıo de Janeiro, 1979); Raymond Goldsmith, Brasil 1850–1984:
desenvolvimento financieiro sob um s
´
eculo de inflac¸ao (S
˜
ao Paulo, 1986); Instituto
Brasileiro de Geografia e Estat
´
ıstica, Estad
´
ısticas hist
´
oricas do Brasil: series econ
ˆ
omicas,
demogr
´
aficas e socias de 1550–1988 (Rio de Janeiro, 1990). Chile:Jos
´
eD
´
ıaz, Rolf
L
¨
uders, and Gert Wagner, “Econom
´
ıa chilena 1810–1995:evoluci
´
on cuantitativa
del producto total y sectorial” (Documento de Trabajo 186,Pont
´
ıfica Universidad
Cat
´
olica, 1998); Jos
´
eJofre, Rolf L
¨
uders, and Gert Wagner, “Econom
´
ıa chilena 1810–
1995.Cuentas fiscales” (Documento de Trabajo 188,Pont
´
ıfica Universidad Cat
´
olica,
1998); Juan Braun et al., “Econom
´
ıa chilena 1810–1995. Estad
´
ısticas hist
´
oricas”
(Documento de Trabajo 187,Pont
´
ıfica Universidad Cat
´
olica, 1998). Mexico:John
Coastworth, “Obstacles to Economic Growth in Nineteenth Century Mexico,”
American Historical Review (February 1978); Instituto Nacional de Estad
´
ıstica,
Geograf
´
ıa e Inform
´
atica, Estad
´
ısticas Hist
´
oricas de M
´
exico I (M
´
exico City, 1986);
Sandra Kuntz-Ficker, “Nuevas series del comercio exterior de M
´
exico,” Revista de
Historia Econ
´
omica (Primavera-Verano 2001). Uruguay:Luis B
´
ertola et al., El PBI
de Uruguay 1870–1936 y otras estimaciones (Montevideo, 1999); Magdalena Bertino
and H
´
ector Tajam, El PBI de Uruguay 1900–1955 (Montevideo, 1999). Venezuela:
Asdr
´
ubal Baptista, Bases cuantitativas de la econom
´
ıa Venezolana 1830–1995 (Caracas,
1997).
Surveys for the whole of Latin America may be found in Naciones Unidas,
Comisi
´
on Econ
´
omica para Am
´
erica Latina (CEPAL), Serieshist
´
oricas del crecimiento
de Am
´
erica Latina (Santiago de Chile, 1978); Angus Maddison, The World Economy:
AMillennial Perspective (Par
´
ıs, 2001); Pablo Astorga, Ame R. Berg
´
es, and Valpy
FitzGerald, “The Standard of Living in Latin America During the Twentieth Cen-
tury” (Queen Elizabeth House Working Paper Series 103,March 2003); and Andr
´
e
Hofman, The Economic Development of Latin America in the Twentieth Century
(Cheltenham, 2000).
Relative factor and commodity prices have been systematically collected and
studied by Jeffrey Williamson. His first attempt, with only limited treatment of
Latin America, was “The Evolution of Global Labor Markets Since 1830:Back-
ground Evidence and Hypothesis,” Explorations in Economic History 3 (1995). In a
trilogy bearing the common name “Real Wages and Relative Factor Prices in the
Third World 1820–1940,” Williamson expanded the database on wages, land prices,
and terms of trade to Asia, the Mediterranean basin, and Latin America (Harvard
Institute of Economic Research Discussion Papers nos. 1842, 1844, and 1853, all
produced in 1998). An upgraded version of the Latin America paper was published
with the title “Real Wages, Inequality and Globalization in Latin America before
1940,” Revista de Historia Econ
´
omica,N
´
umero Especial (1999). For national or
regional studies on the topic, see Eulalia Mar
´
ıa Lahmeyer Lobo, “Condiciones
de vida de los artesanos y de la clase obrera en Rio de Janeiro en la decada de
1880 hasta 1920,” HISLA, Revista Latinoamericana de Historia Econ
´
omica y Social 5
(1985); C. W. Brading, “Un an
´
alisis comparativo del costo de la vida en diversas cap-
itales de hispanoam
´
erica,” Bolet
´
ın Hist
´
orico de la Fundaci
´
on John Boulton 20 (1969);
Miguel Urrutia and Mario Arrubla, Compendio de estad
´
ısticas hist
´
oricas de Colombia
(Bogot
´
a, 1970); Oscar Zanetti and Alejandro Garc
´
ıa, United Fruit Company: un
caso de dominio imperialista en Cuba (Habana, 1976); Aurora G
´
omez Galvarriato,
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650 Bibliographical Essays
“The Evolution of Prices and Real Wages in Mexico from the Porfiriato to the Rev-
olution,” in John Coatsworth and Alan Taylor, eds., Latin America and the World
Economy Since 1800 (Cambridge, MA, 1998); Instituto Nacional de Estad
´
ıstica,
Geograf
´
ıa e Inform
´
atica, Estad
´
ısticas Hist
´
oricas de M
´
exico I (M
´
exico City, 1986); Luis
B
´
ertola et al., “Southern Cone Real Wages Compared: A Purchasing Power Parity
Approach to Convergence and Divergence Trends, 1870–1996,” in XXVII Encon-
tro Nacional de Economia, Anais III (Belem do Par
´
a, 1999); and Luis B
´
ertola, Mar
´
ıa
Camou, and Gabriel Porcile, “Comparaci
´
on Internacional del Poder Adquisitivo
de los Salarios Reales de los Pa
´
ıses del Cono Sur, 1870–1945,” Asociaci
´
on Uruguaya
de Historia Econ
´
omica, Segundas Jornadas de Historia Econ
´
omica (Montevideo,
1999).
Terms of trade estimates have been collected in CEPAL, Los t
´
erminos de intercam-
bio de am
´
erica latina (Santiago de Chile, 1978). Recently, Yael Hadass and Jeffrey
Williamson provided a compilation and discussion of terms of trade performance,
including some new series for Latin America, in “Terms-of-Trade Shocks and Eco-
nomic Performance, 1870–1940:Prebisch and Singer Revisited,” Economic Devel-
opment and Cultural Change 51 (2003). Country studies are found in R. Gonc¸alvez
and A. Coelho Barros, “Tend
ˆ
encias dos termos da troca: a tese de Prebisch e
a economia brasileira: 1850–1979,” Pesquisa e Planejamento Econ
´
omico 12 (1982);
and Bel
´
en Baptista and Luis B
´
ertola, “Uruguay 1870–1913: indicadores de comer-
cio exterior” (Asociaci
´
on Uruguaya de Historia Econ
´
omica, Segundas Jornadas de
Historia Econ
´
omica,Montevideo, 1999). See also the terms of trade citations by
Leandro Prados in this volume.
new approaches
As quantitative evidence accumulated, an increasing number of studies have tackled
the periodization of export-led growth, evaluated its achievements and shortcom-
ings, and enhanced the comparative perspective. The dominant feature of this
new work is its critique of the dependency approach, the increasing role given
to domestic forces and circumstances, the progressive expansion of the new eco-
nomic history dominated by mainstream neoclassical thinking, and more recently
by neo-institutional approaches. In some works, neostructuralist, post-Keynesian,
and neo-Schumpeterian approaches have also emerged, prompted by the revival
of the Economic Commission of Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
as an active center for studies on Latin American development. Nevertheless, the
old Annales-like style of historical analysis still constitutes the paradigm for sev-
eral valuable contributions, offering a considerable amount of empirical research
loosely related to any theoretical reference, with the risks this always implies.
Most of these new data have produced new interpretations of economic perfor-
mance in relation to globalization. Export-led performance is studied in Roberto
Cort
´
es Conde and Jane Hunt, eds., The Latin American Economies: Growth and
the Export Sector 1880–1930 (New York, 1985), and Sergio Silva and Tam
´
as Szm-
recs
´
anyi, eds., Historia econ
ˆ
omica da primeira rep
´
ublica, part 1 (S
˜
ao Paulo, 1996).
Roberto Cort
´
es Conde, “El crecimiento de las econom
´
ıas latinoamericanas, 1880–
1930,” Historia Mexicana XLII:3 (1993), makes a neoclassical defense of the achieve-
ments of export-led growth. Alan Taylor, “Tres fases del crecimiento econ
´
omico
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Bibliographical Essays 651
argentino,” Revista de Historia Econ
´
omica 3 (1994), dates the Argentine decline
in the 1910s, prior to the protectionist policies of the 1930s. Other discussions
of Argentine performance are found in Antonio Santamar
´
ıa and Marcela Garc
´
ıa,
“El crecimiento econ
´
omico argentino en perspectiva hist
´
orica,” Revista de Histo-
ria Econ
´
omica 3 (1994); Roberto Cort
´
es Conde, La econom
´
ıa argentina en el largo
plazo: Ensayos de historia econ
´
omica de los siglos XIX y XX (Buenos Aires, 1997); and
Mario Rapoport, Andres Mussachio, and Eduardo Madrid, Historia econ
´
omica,
pol
´
ıtica y social de la Argentina (1880–2000) (Buenos Aires, 2001). Stephen Haber,
“Introduction: Economic Growth and Latin American Economic Historiography”
in Stephen Haber, ed., How Latin America Fell Behind. Essays on the Economic His-
tories of Brazil and Mexico 1800–1914 (Stanford, 1997), offers a frontal attack on
the dependency approach and moves toward neo-institutional thinking in order to
answer the question in the title of the book. Other relevant contributions in this vol-
ume are: Nathaniel Leff, “Economic Development in Brazil, 1822–1913”; Enrique
C
´
ardenas, “A Macroeconomic Interpetation of Nineteenth-Century Mexico”; and
Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff, “Factor Endowments, Institutions, and
Different Paths of Growth Among New World Economies: A View from Eco-
nomic Historians of the United States.” This latter contribution stresses the role
of original factor endowments in shaping institutions that help account for dif-
ferent growth patterns. Other important contributions are Jos
´
e Antonio Ocampo,
Colombia y la econom
´
ıa mundial 1830–1900 (Bogot
´
a, 1984); Patricio Meller, “Una
perspectiva de largo plazo del desarrollo econ
´
omico chileno, 1880–1990”inMagnus
Blomstr
¨
om and Patricio Meller, eds., Trayectorias divergentes: comparaci
´
on de un
siglo de desarrollo latinoamericano y escandinavo (Santiago, 1990); Luis B
´
ertola and
Gabriel Porcile, “Argentina, Brasil, Uruguay y la econom
´
ıa mundial: una aprox-
imaci
´
on a diferentes reg
´
ımenes de convergencia y divergencia,” in Luis B
´
ertola,
Ensayos de Historia Econ
´
omica: Uruguay y la Regi
´
on en la Econom
´
ıa Mundial 1870–
1990 (Montevideo, 2000); also by the same authors, see “Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay
and the World Economy: An Approach to Different Convergence and Divergence
Regimes” (Documento de Trabajo, Unidad Multidisciplinaria-FCS, 42,Montev-
ideo, 1998). This latter work stresses the existence of different historical patterns for
the relation between globalization and convergence, depending on specialization
patterns and technology in relation to world demand. Jeffrey L. Bortz and Stephen
Haber, eds., The Mexican Economy, 1870–1930:Essays on the Economic History of
Institutions (Stanford, 2002) tackles the relation between economic growth under
autocratic forms, including banking, finance, trade, and labor relations.
globalization and income distribution
Income distribution was a central topic in the structuralist and dependency
approaches, in terms of both the international and the domestic economies: the
outflow of resources and the concentration of property and income were considered
to be permanent features of the export-led model, having a strong negative impact
on development.
Interest in this topic receded in the 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps because of the
intense political debate over who gains from recent globalization experience, there
has been a revival of historical interest in income distribution in the last few years,