Abstract
Building comprehensive social protection systems in Latin America capable of articulating contributory and noncontributory mechanisms, labor regulation, and care policies as a crosscutting element is one of the main challenges facing the rights agenda, social inclusion, and the advancement of a development model that is focused on achieving equality. Furthermore, the objective of universality, one of these systems’ basic principles, demands recognizing the differences and acting on the profound inequalities that continue to characterize societies and the labor market in Latin America. This requires a deeper knowledge of the Latin American social inequality matrix and its structuring axes (socioeconomic stratum, gender, race, ethnicity, territory, and life cycle), together with how they interlace and develop in order to guide public policy analysis and planning. The chapter argues that strengthening care policies in the region should consider their role as a pillar of evolving social protection systems that attend these inequalities. The data and reflections developed in this article are partly based on recent institutional publications by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), especially its Social Development Division. The authors wish to thank Amalia Palma for her support in writing this article, Daniela Huneeus for her editorial review, and Bernardo Atuesta for his comments on this article’s preliminary version
The data and reflections developed in this article are partly based on recent institutional publications by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), especially its Social Development Division. The authors wish to thank Amalia Palma for her support in writing this article, Daniela Huneeus for her editorial review, and Bernardo Atuesta for his comments on this article’s preliminary version.
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Notes
- 1.
Women’s participation rate was 50.2% while men’s was 74.4% (ECLAC, 2019b).
- 2.
- 3.
Time use surveys provide information on the activities people perform in a certain period and the amount of time assigned to them, as established by the Classification of Time-Use Activities for Latin America and the Caribbean (CAUTAL) (ECLAC/INEGI/INMUJERES/ONU-Mujeres, 2016 in ECLAC, 2017a). Currently 19 countries in the region have implemented at least one time use measurement. Although these surveys cannot be compared with each other due to their methodological differences, they provide very important information about the domestic and care work conducted within households as well as their distribution between men and women (ECLAC, 2017a).
- 4.
This is an essential dimension of equality that includes both the distribution of current monetary incomes among people and households, as well as inequalities in the functional distribution of income between capital and labor, and inequality in owning financial and non-financial assets (Bárcena & Prado, 2016; ECLAC, 2017a, 2019b).
- 5.
The development of ECLAC’s thinking on equality over the last decade has been summarized in the following institutional documents: Time for Equality: Closing Gaps, Opening Trails (ECLAC, 2010b); Structural Change for Equality: An Integrated Approach to Development (ECLAC, 2012), Compacts for Equality: Towards a Sustainable Future (ECLAC, 2014b), Horizons 2030: Equality at the Center of Sustainable Development (ECLAC, 2016d) and The Inefficiency of Inequality (ECLAC, 2018c).
- 6.
For more information about these programs and their descriptions and components, see Non-Contributory Social Protection Programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean Database, Social Development Division, ECLAC, [online at]: https://dds.cepal.org/bpsnc/cct
- 7.
Data for 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries that have CCTs.
- 8.
Chile (2015), Colombia (2012), Costa Rica (2011), Ecuador (2012), Mexico (2014), and Peru (2010). Children and adolescents are classified as anyone under the age of 18 and over 12, except in Colombia where the lower limit is 10 (ECLAC, 2017a, p. 200).
- 9.
In 2016, the proportion of women aged 65 or older that received pensions below two poverty lines (44%) was 8% points higher than among men (36%) (ECLAC, 2018b).
- 10.
Forty percent of the average monthly contributory pension benefits, usually higher than non-contributory pensions, were below the minimum wage threshold in eight countries of the region in around 2015 (ECLAC, 2018b).
- 11.
For information on the non-contributory cash transfer and pension benefits received by persons with disabilities in countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, see Non-Contributory Social Protection Programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean Database, Social Development Division, ECLAC, [online at]: https://dds.cepal.org/bpsnc/cct. Also see Ullmann, Atuesta, Cecchini and Rubio (n.d.).
- 12.
- 13.
For a more detailed analysis of these tendencies, including the heterogeneity found between Latin American and Caribbean countries, see ECLAC (2018b).
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This chapter was translated from its original Spanish version to English by Jill Haring.
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Abramo, L., Robles, C. (2021). The Social Inequality Matrix, Universal Social Protection Systems, and Care in Latin America. In: Araujo Guimarães, N., Hirata, H. (eds) Care and Care Workers. Latin American Societies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51693-2_3
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