The Inequality Crisis: Latin America and the Caribbean at the Crossroads edited by Matías Busso and Julián Messina published by IDB (2020).
Inequality is stubbornly high in Latin America and the Caribbean. It manifests in many aspects of people’s lives—from unequal degrees of opportunity and access to high-quality education, health services, or justice, to vast differences in the ability of families to cope when disaster strikes in the shape of a pandemic or climate change. This volume explores the underlying economic factors that account for these many inequalities and lays out what to expect in the wake of COVID-19. The picture that emerges is one of a fractured society where the day-to-day lives of the haves and have-nots are wholly disconnected. They work and live in different neighborhoods. Their children go to different schools. And their families visit different health clinics when they fall ill. The COVID-19 crisis has uncovered the endemic weaknesses of a fractured social contract in need of fundamental reform. This volume offers public policy suggestions that can help level the playing field and overcome this inequality crisis.
