Reproduction Structures of Socio-Economic Inequality in Latin America

The growing compendium of research on economic inequality often depicts Latin America as one of the regions with the highest inequality and lowest intergenerational mobility (Behrman et al., Intergenerational mobility in Latin America. IDB working paper no. 379, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1817249 , 2001). The formation of the modern Latin American states is often named as one of the primary causes of the prevailing modern high inequality in the region (Telles and Bailey, Am J Sociol, 118:1559–1595, 2013), but a mechanism that links this system with the economic variables observed today is still debated. This chapter shows that social structures established during the domination of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the region created structures of social reproduction that are responsible for a substantial part of the observed inequality. This chapter contrasts the work on inequality from Jodhka et al. (Inequality in capitalist societies, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315544366 , 2017) with the formation of modern Latin American states. Finally, it argues that this methodology provides a better approach to understanding the socio-economic inequality in Latin America than a purely economic methodology.