Abstract
The region of Latin America exhibits significant diversity with regard to the size and scope of social protection programs. In this article, I propose a new way of measuring a country’s “social policy regime,” moving past expenditure-based conceptions of welfare provision to incorporate the coverage of programs. Employing this new measure, I use cluster analysis to demonstrate that Latin American social policy regimes cluster into four distinct categories. I then employ the comparative historical method to test a theory of why countries fall into each of these four categories. The analysis provides evidence that a country’s record of industrialization, the nature of political incorporation, and levels of ethnic and racial diversity are key determinants of the size and scope of Latin America’s social policy regimes.
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Notes
Seekings (2008) does consider the impact of political variables on the emergence of three general types of welfare regimes in ‘the south.’ He finds that the presence of an immigrant working class, the role of technocrats, and electoral competition, along with other structural factors, help to explain variation between the agrarian, workerist, and pauperist approaches to welfare delivery (p. 28).
Ideally I would test for the existence and composition of such country clusters at different points in time. Indeed, it would be helpful to confirm that the liberalization of the 1980s and ‘90s did not result in a complete re-ordering of social policy regimes in the region. In a large-N analysis of the effects of economic liberalization and globalization on social welfare spending, Segura-Ubiergo (2007) finds that trade openness has a significant (and negative) effect on social security and welfare spending, but no effect on health and education expenditure. Similarly, Segura-Ubiergo (2007) finds that capital account openness has no impact on education and health spending and only a negligible effect on social security and welfare. Moreover, while other studies do uncover changes in the character of welfare regimes following the neoliberal reform process (Dion 2010; Barrientos 2004; Haggard and Kaufman 2008; Brooks 2009), these shifts were bounded by the stickiness of social policy systems and the important role of policy legacies (Castiglioni 2005; Haggard and Kaufman 2008). I, therefore, maintain that the most general characteristics of Latin American states’ welfare regimes likely survived the liberalization and globalization processes.
This issue is discussed in greater depth in the conclusion.
It should be noted that these two types of incorporation are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, the ‘mobilizing’ systems exhibit some level of corporatism and the ‘corporatist’ systems passed through periods of mobilization. Rather than indicating an exclusive style of incorporation, this categorization seeks to identify the predominant mode of incorporation.
Van Cott (1994) notes that it is somewhat misleading to characterize these states as ‘homogenous’ since the seeming lack of diversity results from explicit strategies of ‘annihilation’ in earlier periods (p. 4–5).
This should not suggest that pensions are not a useful form of social protection, or that all recipients of pensions are high income-earners. Clearly there are many formal sector workers who are by no means privileged. For a discussion of how pension policy can be reformed to benefit low-income individuals more generally, see: Huber 2006.
Clearly some aspects of health investment, namely expenditure on tertiary care, are better classified as ‘risk coping,’ since they provide services to individuals who have already fallen victim to risk. My focus here is on the preventive side of healthcare, and therefore, the measures employed in the analysis assess to what extent health spending improves the human capital of the population.
The data for Argentina, Ecuador and Uruguay are for urban areas only. Since Argentina and Uruguay are highly urbanized countries (89% and 91% respectively in 2001 (World Bank 2007)), this should not bias those measures. In the case of Ecuador, only 61% of the population lived in an urban center in 2001 (World Bank 2007). Since rural areas in Latin America tend to be characterized by higher levels of poverty and lower access to protection policies, the value for Ecuador may appear lower than the actual drop-out rate.
While these deaths are partly tied to issues of water sanitation, the WHO argues that this variable is “fundamentally affected by the effectiveness of, and access to the health service” (WHO 2007: 2). Indeed, while sanitation can cause an illness, access to high-quality healthcare would prevent the illness from killing an individual.
These data are not provided in a disaggregated form (by income quintile), and therefore, I analyze figures for the population as a whole.
While a measure of overall access to primary healthcare would be preferable to these figures, such data does not exist. Mesa-Lago (2008) reports social insurance health coverage for the total population and the labor force, but this does not adequately assess total healthcare coverage, as countries may or may not offer a public service for those left out of the contributory system. Thus, data on the cause of death is the closest that one can come to determining whether individuals have access to basic health services. Unfortunately, with the exception of HIV/AIDS, data on the cause of death is limited to the under-five population, which is why I do not analyze figures for the full population.
Coverage of tertiary healthcare could also be included on this dimension, but because of a lack of data, I exclude this from the analysis.
A World Bank study by Rofman (2005) presents a measure of pension coverage among the active population. This measure correlates with the ECLAC measure at 0.93, but the ECLAC version offers better country coverage.
Because women make up a disproportionate share of the informal sector, this figure also gives a sense of the gendered character of welfare regimes. Data for pension coverage of working women is available, but differs only minimally from total pension coverage (correlation =.98) and male pension coverage (correlation =.96). This is likely because the variable only considers women working outside the home. One of the reasons that women tend to exhibit lower levels of coverage is because they exit the labor market due to care responsibilities. A second reason (in the Latin American context) is because of the high level of informality among female workers. Since the measure of women’s pension coverage does not capture females who have exited or function outside of the formal labor market, I choose to use the measure of pension coverage among informal sector workers.
In an ideal world I would also include a measure of the coverage of family allowances, maternity leave, workers disability, or other forms of income support to working-aged adults. Such data, however, are not available for the region as a whole.
See footnote 3 for a discussion of the temporal character of these data.
I do not test for the robustness of the findings using the single linkage mechanism because of the tendency of this technique to form long clusters and to group relatively dissimilar cases.
I tested the robustness of these findings using both the complete and average linkage techniques and both tests revealed the same number and composition of clusters, suggesting that the results are quite reliable.
A careful look at each country’s performance suggests that Bolivia and Venezuela may have misreported the enrolment ratios and drop-out rate. Bolivia’s primary enrolment rate is reported as 99%, which is higher than Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay, and not believable. Venezuela’s education figures are internally inconsistent and vary significantly across distinct sources.
I tested the robustness of these findings by conducting the analysis with the complete and average linkage techniques and both tests produced the same number and composition of clusters.
Bolivia, Honduras, and Venezuela are not included in this table. I exclude Bolivia and Venezuela for the reasons outlined in footnote 20. Honduras is excluded because no data is available for the country’s risk coping programs and therefore it cannot be classified on that dimension.
As mentioned previously, the data used for the cluster analysis are from the late 1990s and early 2000s.
In a simple test of association (using the Kendall’s Tau test), I found that industry as a share of GDP and industrial employment as a share of total employment are strongly and significantly associated with a country’s regime placement for both risk prevention and risk coping. Racial and ethnic diversity is also strongly and significantly associated with risk prevention, but not with risk coping.
Costa Rica had only two brief authoritarian experiences during the 20th century (1917–1918 and 1948) (Polity 2003). Still, the country’s record of democracy is not perfect and the Communist Party was banned from participating in politics between 1948 and 1971.
Mesa-Lago (2008) notes that based on the timing of Costa Rica’s welfare regime development, it is an intermediate state, but that the level of coverage puts the country in the category of pioneer (p. 4 & 23).
Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay all witnessed long and repressive bureaucratic authoritarian regimes in the 1960s–‘80s.
Although Panama shares outcomes with Brazil and Mexico, the country’s political history varies from the previous two states. Indeed, the presence of the Canal Zone and the United States’ extensive involvement in national politics makes the country an outlier of sorts. For this reason, I contend that Panama’s path to a high risk coping/medium risk preventing configuration is likely quite unique.
I focus on Brazil and Mexico for the reasons outlined in footnote 28.
Furtado (1970) argues that Mexico and Argentina were the two Latin American states to attain “a significant degree” of industrialization before the First World War. Still, he notes that Brazil too made early progress with industrialization. In 1929, industrial output constituted 14.2% of GDP in Mexico and 11.7% of GDP in Brazil (p. 111).
As noted in Fig. 4, Ecuador and Peru are characterized by high levels of ethnic differentiation, while Colombia exhibits high racial differentiation.
Martínez Franzoni and Voorend (2009) offer additional evidence of how repression and the lack of mobilization in Central America contributed to the formation of systems that provide low levels of risk coping and risk prevention coverage. Specifically, they argue that the existence of heavy-handed repression fostered the creation of states that play little to no social role and in social policies that cover only a small elite sector of the population. Even in education, Martínez Franzoni and Voorend (2009) argue that neglect for the rural countryside resulted in a low-quality dualistic system that is characterized by abysmal levels of coverage.
In a draft working paper at the UNRISD Filgueira explores the determinants of distinct social policy regimes. Seekings (2008) also seeks to explain why ‘southern’ countries group into three distinct welfare regimes.
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I am grateful to Merike Blofield, Agustina Giraudy, Jonathan Hartlyn, Evelyne Huber, Juan Pablo Luna, Lars Schoultz, and John Stephens for their helpful suggestions. The paper also benefited from the feedback of several anonymous reviewers. All remaining errors are my own.
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Pribble, J. Worlds Apart: Social Policy Regimes in Latin America. St Comp Int Dev 46, 191–216 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-010-9076-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-010-9076-6