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Latin American Class Structures: Their Composition and Change during the Neoliberal Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Alejandro Portes  and
Kelly Hoffman
Alejandro Portes
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Kelly Hoffman
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

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This article proposes a framework for the analysis of social classes in Latin America and presents evidence on the composition of the class structure in the region and its evolution during the last two decades, corresponding to the years of implementation of a new economic model in most countries. The paper is an update of an earlier article on the same topic published in this journal at the end of the period of import substitution industrialization. Relative to that earlier period, the present era registers a visible increase in income inequality, a persistent concentration of wealth in the top decile of the population, a rapid expansion of the class of micro-entrepreneurs, and a stagnation or increase of the informal proletariat. The contraction of public sector employment and the stagnation of formal sector labor demand in most countries have led to a series of adaptive solutions by the middle and lower classes. The rise of informal self-employment and micro-entrepreneurialism throughout the region can be interpreted as a direct result of the new adjustment policies. We explore other, less orthodox adaptive strategies, including the rise of violent crime in the cities and migration abroad by an increasingly diversified cross-section of the population. The impact that changes in the class structure have had on party politics and other forms of popular political mobilization in Latin American countries is discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , 2003 , pp. 41 - 82
Copyright
Copyright 2003 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

1.

We thank Emilio Klein for assistance in our preliminary assembling of data for this paper and Peter Evans, William Smith, and Susan Eckstein for their comments on an earlier version of the paper. Responsibility for the contents is exclusively ours.

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