"Educational Expansion and Inequality of Earnings Opportunities: Recent Trends in Latin American Countries"
Jérémie Gignoux

This chapter provides detailed evidence on the recent trends in the distribution of earnings opportunities, among men aged 40 to 49, in a set of five Latin American countries – Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru -, and studies the contribution of the educational expansion observed between the early 1960s to the mid 1980s to these trends.

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"Bigger… but Stronger? The Middle Class in Chile and Mexico in the Last Decade"
Dagmar Hertova, Luis Felipe López-Calva and Eduardo Ortiz Juárez

The analysis of the middle class emerges as a relevant issue given the strong influence that this social group has on societies and also on the economic performance. The aim of this document is to empirically contrast different ways of measuring the middle class, from purely statistical approaches to context-relative and absolute-standard measures, and to vulnerability analysis.

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"Sociological and Economic Approaches to the Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality in Latin America"
Florencia Torche

Latin America is the region of the world with the highest level of income inequality (De Ferranti et al. 2004). The historical roots of economic inequality date back to the colonial times. They include the unequal distribution of land, and the establishment of institutions that prevented the access to human capital, productive resources, and political power by the majority of the population (Engerman and Sokoloff 2002).

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