Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/146469 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IDB Working Paper Series No. IDB-WP-682
Publisher: 
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Washington, DC
Abstract: 
This paper argues that the assumption of a homogeneous workforce, which is implicitly invoked in the decomposition analysis of changes in welfare indicators, hides the role that schooling and its returns may have on the understanding of these changes. Using Peruvian cross-sectional data for a period of ten years (2004-2013) and counterfactual simulations, this paper finds that the main factor contributing to poverty reduction has been individuals' changes in labor earnings, and the role of these changes has been less important in reducing income inequality. The main driving force of reduced income inequality has been the fall in returns to education, which at the same time has been one of the important factors to constraining the period's remarkable progress in poverty reduction and expansion of the middle class.
Subjects: 
Poverty
middle class
inequality
decomposition
labor
Peru
JEL: 
C83
E24
D63
I24
I32
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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