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Earnings Mobility, Inequality, and Economic Growth in Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela

File(s)
Fields235_Earnings_mobility.pdf (1.22 MB)
Permanent Link(s)
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/75494
Collections
Faculty Publications - International and Comparative Labor
ILR Articles and Chapters
Author
Fields, Gary S.
Duval-Hernandez, Robert
Freije, Samuel
Sanchez Puerta, Maria Laura
Abstract

This paper examines changes in individual earnings during positive and negative growth periods in three Latin American economies: Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela. We ask two major questions. First, do panel income changes favor the income recipients who started at the top of the income distribution (“divergent mobility”) or those who started at the bottom (“convergent mobility”)? And second, are the groups that are found to gain the most when the economy is growing those that are found to lose the most when the economy is contracting (“symmetry of mobility”) or is the pattern asymmetric in the sense that the same groups do best both in times of economic growth and in times of economic decline? We find support for the divergent mobility hypothesis only in scattered years in the cases of Mexico and Venezuela and no support at all in the case of Argentina. Rather, earnings mobility is most frequently convergent or neutral in all three countries. As for the symmetry of mobility hypothesis, we find that it is rejected in nearly all cases; rather, those groups that gain the most when the economy is growing are also the ones that gain the most or lose the least when the economy is contracting. Furthermore, we discuss how the absence of divergence reconciles with rising inequality in the countries under study.

Date Issued
2015-01-01
Keywords
earnings mobility
•
income convergence
•
Latin America
Related DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-014-9285-8
Related To
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/74721
Rights
Required Publisher Statement: © Springer. Final version published as: Fields, G. S., Duval-Hernandez, R., Freije, S., & Sanchez Puerta, M. L. (2015). Earnings mobility, inequality, and economic growth in Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela. Journal of Economic Inequality, 13(1), 113-128. doi: 10.1007/s10888-014-9285-8 Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Type
article

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