Over the last six decades, Latin America and the Caribbean has experienced a wave of migration to urban areas that has boosted the percentage of people living in cities from around 50% of the population in 1960 to more than 80% today. Millions of those people have been forcibly displaced, fleeing crime, political conflict, and gang violence. Many others have been uprooted by … [Read more...] about Maximizing the Potential of Urban Migration in Latin America and the Caribbean
A Nobel Prize on Women in the Labor Market that Speaks to Latin America and the Caribbean
Claudia Goldin, a professor at Harvard, became the first woman ever to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences individually, without co-winners, on October 9, when the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences held up her work as generating "the first comprehensive account of women's earnings and labour market participation through the centuries." Goldin's pioneering studies, … [Read more...] about A Nobel Prize on Women in the Labor Market that Speaks to Latin America and the Caribbean
Examining the Effectiveness of a Financial Inclusion Reform in Uruguay
In 2014, Uruguay launched an ambitious financial inclusion program, joining other countries in the region that have sought to give citizens greater access to banking and financial services and encourage the use of electronic payments instruments that avoid the need for cash. Unbanked people in Uruguay, as in other countries of the region, had traditionally lacked ways to … [Read more...] about Examining the Effectiveness of a Financial Inclusion Reform in Uruguay
How the COVID Pandemic Affected Automation and Labor Markets in Peru
As COVID-19 struck the developing world, governments imposed mobility restrictions to reduce contagion, causing severe disruptions in labor markets. In Latin America and the Caribbean, where 57% of all workers hold informal jobs that often require them to be physically present, nearly half of the labor force was compelled to stop work in the first phases of the … [Read more...] about How the COVID Pandemic Affected Automation and Labor Markets in Peru
Reducing Extreme Weather Impacts on Rural Children through Financial Inclusion
Heavy rainfall and long droughts in many parts of the world have become more frequent and intense with changes in climate. They have caused crops to wither in the field or be washed away, disrupted water supplies, harmed livestock, damaged farm equipment, and upended agricultural infrastructure. Rural families whose livelihoods depend on land and natural resources are the most … [Read more...] about Reducing Extreme Weather Impacts on Rural Children through Financial Inclusion