Short and long-run distributional impacts of COVID-19 in Latin America

Monday, October 12, 2020
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EDT
WebEx

“Facing Inequality” is a webinar series hosted by the Institute for International Economic Policy. This virtual series focuses on current and emerging inequality issues in the U.S. and around the globe. The series brings attention to aspects of inequality being made increasingly relevant by the current COVID-19 pandemic and associated crises. It is organized under the stewardship of IIEP Director James Foster, Oliver T. Carr, Jr. Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics, and IIEP Faculty Affiliate Trevor Jackson, Assistant Professor of History. The series is co-sponsored by the GW Interdisciplinary Inequality Series, co-organized by Prof. Jackson from the Department of History and Prof. Bryan Stuart from the Department of Economics.

This was the eighth event in the facing inequality series. Our distinguished speakers, Nora Lustig and Guido Neidhöfer discussed their paper, “Short and long-run distributional impacts of COVID-19 in Latin America ” (Lustig, Neidhöfer and Tommasi). They simulate the short- and long-term distributional consequences of COVID-19 in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. They show that the short-term impact on income inequality and poverty can be very significant but that additional spending on social assistance has a large offsetting effect in Brazil and Argentina. The effect is much smaller in Colombia and nil in Mexico, where there has been no such expansion. To project the long-term consequences, they estimate the impact of the pandemic on human capital and its intergenerational persistence. Hereby, they use information on school lockdowns, educational mitigation policies, and account for educational losses related to parental job loss. Their findings show that in all four countries the impact is strongly asymmetric and affects particularly the human capital of the most vulnerable. Consequently, educational inequality and inequality of opportunity are expected to increase substantially, in spite of the mitigation policies.

About the Speakers:

Nora Lustig is Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Latin American Economics and the founding Director of the Commitment to    Equity Institute (CEQ) at Tulane University. She is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, the  Center for Global Development and the Inter-American Dialogue. Professor Lustig’s research focuses on economic development, inequality and social policies with emphasis on Latin America. Her recent publication Commitment to Equity Handbook: Estimating the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Inequality and Poverty is a step-by-step guide to assessing the impact of taxation and social spending on inequality and poverty in developing countries. Prof. Lustig is a founding member and President Emeritus of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) and was a co-director of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2000, Attacking Poverty. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Inequality and is a member of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality’s Executive Council. Prof. Lustig served on the Atkinson Commission on Poverty, the High-level Group on Measuring Economic Performance and Social Progress, and the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance. She received her doctorate in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Guido Neidhöfer is an advanced researcher in the Labor Markets and Human Resources department at ZEW Mannheim, Germany, as well as a fellow at the College for Interdisciplinary Educational Research (CIDER), visiting scholar at the Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS) of the National University of La Plata, and an associated researcher of the Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Humano (CEDH) of the Universidad de San Andres in Argentina. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of economic inequality, social mobility, education and migration.

About the Discussants:

Stephen B. Kaplan is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. Professor Kaplan’s research and teaching interests focus on the frontiers of international and comparative political economy, where he specializes in the political economy of global finance and development, the rise of China in the Western Hemisphere, and Latin American politics.

Professor Kaplan joined the GWU faculty in the fall of 2010 after completing a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University and his Ph.D at Yale University. While at Yale, Kaplan also worked as a researcher for former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Prior to his doctoral studies, Professor Kaplan was a senior economic analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, writing extensively on developing country economics, global financial market developments, and emerging market crises from 1998 to 2003.

Dr. Michael C. Wolfson received his B.Sc with honours from University of Toronto jointly in mathematics, computer science and economics in 1971, and then a Ph.D. from Cambridge in economics in 1977.  He retired as Assistant Chief      Statistician, Analysis and Development (which included the Health Statistics program and the central R&D function) at Statistics Canada in 2009.  He was awarded a Canada Research Chair in Population Health Modeling in the Faculty of      Medicine at the University of Ottawa for 2010-2017.  Prior to joining Statistics Canada, he held increasingly senior positions in the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Department of Finance, the Privy Council Office, the House of Commons, and the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office.  While a senior public servant, he was also a founding Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program in Population Health (1988-2003). He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and a member of the recently created Canadian Statistics Advisory Council.

More From This Series