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Public Seminar Series: Inherited Inequality in Latin America

29 January 2025, 5:00 pm–6:30 pm

Metal sculpture of earth with arrow though the middle

Join us for a talk by Francisco H. G. Ferreira, Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and Director of the International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Organiser

Sudershana Dave

Location

103
51 Gordon Square
London
WC1H 0PN
United Kingdom
this is an in-person event

This talk explores the available evidence on the persistence of inequality across generations in Latin America – one of the world’s two most unequal regions. We begin with a “quantitative review” of the literatures on intergenerational mobility and inequality of opportunity in Latin America, based on all estimates we can find for each country, classified by outcome, method, and data type. The aim is to present the data graphically and draw out common patterns and robust findings (if any), while acknowledging the uncertainty arising from the various sources and methods used. The second part of the talk reports original findings on inherited inequality for ten Latin American countries, based on machine learning estimates of the share of current inequality that can be predicted by parental education, occupation, and race, as well as place of birth. These findings are benchmarked against analogous statistics for some 50-60 countries in all other regions of the world.

Chaired by Néstor Castañeda

About the Speaker

Francisco H. G. Ferreira

Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and Director of the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics

Francisco H. G. Ferreira is the Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and Director of the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics. Francisco works on the measurement, causes, and consequences of inequality and poverty in developing countries. His work has been published widely and awarded various prizes. He is a Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); an Affiliated Scholar with the Stone Center at CUNY; a former President of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association and a former Editor in Chief of the Journal of Economic Inequality. Prior to joining the faculty at LSE, he had a long career at the World Bank but also taught at PUC-Rio and at the Paris School of Economics. He was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and holds a PhD in Economics from the LSE.

More about Francisco H. G. Ferreira

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