Roxana Maurizio

Semi-conditional cash transfers in the form of family allowances for children and adolescents in the informal economy in Argentina

In 2009, Argentina introduced a new transfer programme for children and adolescents younger than age 18 (Universal Child Allowance) that extended coverage under the contributory programme for family allowances to include families in the informal economy and families of unemployed persons. This article describes this innovative programme, compares it with similar programmes in Latin America and analyses its impact on coverage and its possible effects on the welfare of the population. The results indicate that the extension of access to this type of benefit has reduced considerably the coverage gap for the poor and indigent and supports efforts to consolidate the operations of different and poorly coordinated transfer programmes.

Dynamics of Poverty, Labor Market and Public Policies in Latin America

Latin America experienced six years of sustained growth from 2003-2008. The high rate of economic growth over these years – before the 2008-2009 crisis – positively impacted social and labour market indicators. Evidence of these positive impacts can be seen in the form of job creation (particularly formal occupations), reduced unemployment and a slight recovery of average wages. During the period of interest, the rates of poverty and extreme poverty in the region respectively fell by 11 and 6 percentage points (p.p.). It is highly pertinent, in this context, to study the dynamics of poverty in the region and to analyze the flows into and out of poverty that accompanied this significant reduction in poverty. The main objective of this paper is to carry out a comparative study of poverty dynamics in five Latin American countries. The study specifically aims to analyze the extent to which countries with various levels of poverty incidence differ in terms of the intensity of poverty exits and entries, identify the relative importance of events associated with poverty transitions (such as factors in the labour market, demographic change and public policy), and finally, this study aims to examine the ways in which these events affect households with different characteristics.In order to achieve these objectives, we perform a dynamic analysis of panel data from regular household surveys. Of the five countries included in the study, Argentina and Costa Rica are found to have a relatively low incidence of poverty, Brazil is in an intermediary situation in this regard, while relatively high rates of poverty are found in Ecuador and Peru. This heterogeneous selection gives us a varied picture of social deprivation in the region.This dynamic analysis is useful for policy recommendations to overcome high poverty levels in the region, both by reducing the probability of falling into poverty and increasing the chances of moving out of poverty.

Semi-conditional cash transfers in the form of family allowances for children and adolescents in the informal economy in Argentina: Semi-conditional family allowances for Argentina's informal economy

In 2009, Argentina introduced a new transfer programme for children and adolescents younger than age 18 (Universal Child Allowance) that extended coverage under the contributory programme for family allowances to include families in the informal economy and families of unemployed persons. This article describes this innovative programme, compares it with similar programmes in Latin America and analyses its impact on coverage and its possible effects on the welfare of the population. The results indicate that the extension of access to this type of benefit has reduced considerably the coverage gap for the poor and indigent and supports efforts to consolidate the operations of different and poorly coordinated transfer programmes.

The role of labour market and social protection in reducing inequality and eradicating poverty in Latin America

Latin America has experienced an unprecedented period of macroeconomic stability and high economic growth between 2003 and 2008. The main aim of this paper is to analyse to what extent these more favourable conditions have been an opportunity for Latin American countries to recover their labour markets and conduct a more active social policy. The paper discusses the contribution of the labour market and of the social protection system as effective mechanisms to overcome poverty and reduce income inequality. The conclusions state that, even though the labour market policy framework has changed, and now yields better outcomes, there are many more social and policy issues and challenges ahead than the ones that are usually acknowledged.

Changes in Occupational Mobility, Labour Regulations and Rising Precariousness in Argentina

Labour turnover of low-tenure workers rose in Argentina during the second half of the nineties, precisely after important changes were introduced in labour regulations. The analysis of exit rates indicates that the alterations in the labour market institutions apparently had no effect on labour mobility. This fact appears to be associated to the shortage of occupational opportunities which may have increased the incidence of unstable trajectories among those working without coverage. Moreover, the rising unemployment increased the participation of non-registered, highly-mobile workers. Hence, this is a process that by itself led to an increase in overall mobility.

Recent decline in wage inequality and formalization of the labour market in Argentina

Labour market conditions improved during the 2000s in Latin America, a process that included a reduction in the magnitude of informal employment. A decline of wage inequality was another feature of this period. Both dynamics were particularly intense in Argentina. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the role played by the process of formalization of the labour market that occurred in Argentina during that period on the reduction of income inequality, while additionally taking into account other factors that might have also contributed to such dynamics of income inequality. The method employed is a decomposition proposed by Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux, which allows extending the Oaxaca-Blinder approach to decompose some distributive statistics of income between a ‘composition effect’ and a ‘returns effect’. The study concludes that the process of increasing labour market formalization had an equalizing effect over the period, a finding that had not been emphasized in previous studies.

Unemployment Duration and Business Cycle in Argentina: A Quantile Regression Analysis

Argentina constitutes an interesting case for the analysis of the labour market given that during the nineties it reached high economic growth rates and a stable macroeconomic environment together with a significant raise in unemployment. This dynamic was associated to increases in the entry flows to unemployment and the average duration of these episodes. The proportion of long-term unemployment also grew significantly.The aim of this paper is twofold. First, to evaluate the presence of differential effects of the business cycle and changes in the productive structure on unemployment hazard rates along the elapsed unemployment duration of the spells. Second, to test the validity of the proportional assumption imposed in most of the studies about unemployment duration as well as to propose the use of an alternative econometric method. Censored quantile regressions will be used in order to estimate in a more flexible and robust way the effect of covariates on the conditional distribution of duration. This is the first study in applying this methodology to unemployment duration in Argentina. The results indicate that the reduction of the labour opportunities implied an increase in unemployment duration, especially for those unemployed with long-term episodes. As a consequence, the long unemployment spells became even longer during the period under analysis.

Una evaluación del efecto scarring en Argentina

En este estudio se evalua el efecto de corto plazo del transito por el desempleo sobre los salarios y la insercion laboral posterior. El llamado efecto scarring no ha sido estudiado previamente en America Latina y en especifico en Argentina. Utilizando el esquema rotativo de la muestra de la Encuesta de Hogares se estima la magnitud de la penalidad salarial, y del incremento en la probabilidad de transitar hacia la informalidad, luego del paso por el desempleo. Se utilizan dos estrategias de estimacion: por un lado, el modelo lineal para datos de panel con efectos fijos y aleatorios; por otro, el estimador de diferencias en diferencias con propensity score matching. Se muestra que el paso por el desempleo eleva en el corto plazo la probabilidad de alcanzar un puesto informal, pero que no es significativa su influencia sobre las remuneraciones, una vez que se controla por el tipo de ocupaciones.

Factors Associated with Poverty and Indigence Mobility in Five Latin American Countries

Abstract Latin America experienced a long period of sustained growth since 2003 that positively impacted social and labor market indicators, including poverty. This paper contributes to the understanding of this process as it carries out a comparative study of poverty and indigence dynamics in five Latin American countries during 2003–2012. Specifically, it extends the analysis of a previously published study by broadening the time coverage and examining indigence mobility. It analyzes the extent to which countries with different levels of poverty (extreme poverty) incidence diverge in terms of exit and entry rates, and identifies the relative importance of the frequency and impact of events associated with poverty transitions. For this, a dynamic analysis of panel data is carried out using regular household surveys. Sizeable rates of poverty and indigence movements were observed in all five countries and it was found that a large proportion of poor or indigent households experienced positive events, mainly related to the labor market; however, only a small fraction of them actually exited poverty and indigence. It appeared, therefore, that even when the economy behaved reasonably well, high levels of labor turnover and income mobility (even of a negative nature) still prevail, mainly associated with the high level of precariousness and the undeveloped system of social protection that characterize the studied countries.

Macroeconomic regime and labor market. The Argentine experience of the past two decades

This document analyzes the interactions between macroeconomic regimes, employment generation and the dynamics of labor incomes in Argentina under two different macroeconomic regimes: the currency board regime of the 1990s and the high real exchange rate regime that followed. The former, characterized by a strong currency overvaluation, had a negative impact on economic activity and the labor market. However, the maintenance of a competitive real exchange rate does not by itself guarantee the sustained positive performance of the labor market, as it became evident in Argentina during the 2000s. Although the sizable depreciation of the peso –together with a positive international context- favored the expansion of output and employment, the initial concern of maintaining the real exchange rate at a competitive level was not continued with policies aimed to counteract the appreciation trend that appeared a few years after the implementation of the new regime.