Explores various forms of social exclusion in Latin America, including residential segregation in Bolivian cities, exclusion in health care in Brazil, barriers to legal status of Nicaraguan immigrants in Costa Rica, geographic isolation in El Salvador, and educational inequality among the indigenous in Mexico.

The authors analyze the ownership and use of income-generating assets, as well as access to them. Where there are market imperfections, they propose policies to ease the constraints faced by the poor in accumulating the human, physical and social capital they need to generate greater income."--BOOK JACKET.

The aim of this book is to understand why, despite an increase in average income in Mexico during the 1984-92 period of economic liberalization, the conditions of the poor deteriorated and income inequality increased. To explain why some individuals were able to take advantage of the opportunities that economic liberalization was generating, while others were prevented from doing so, Miguel Szeacute;kely suggests a methodology to extract additional information from poverty and inequality measures, and to test the main theories of household saving behavior.

The use of income distribution indicators in the economics literature has increased considerably in recent years. This work relies of household surveys from 18 LAC countries to take a step back from the use of these indicators, and explore what's behind the numbers, and what information they convey.

Covers the 1980s and 1990s.