The new UN Human Development report is out and there are two interesting observations about Latin America. The first, as Oppenheimer notes, is the curse of resources. Latin America's abundance of certain natural resources holds the region back because they fail to develop more advanced industries. The second is the importance of reducing inequality to reduce poverty. The UNDP report shows that a rising tide does not lift all boats and that country's with high GDP's and high inequality may have more extreme poverty (living on less than $1 per day) than countries with low GDP's and low inequality. The UN report is not recommending outright the redistribution of wealth, but they are pointing at a problem that plagues Latin America more than it does Africa or Asia.
The one thing that always bothers me about the UN Development report is the use of the rankings system. The system is based on several measurements including child mortality and life expectancy. Thus, a country like Cuba scores much higher than it should (among the highest in Latin America) because they do fairly well on these statistics, even as the quality of life is not all that great. Also, countries throughout the region today are reporting on how they moved in the rankings and which countries they are ahead of or behind. While the ranking does grab a good amount of media attention, this number detracts from real messages of the report about poverty and development.
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