With stark income inequalities rooted in its dual currency economy, Cuba is taxing down high and unearned incomes, while trying to raise national productivity and official salaries through performance-related pay and labor restructuring. Such measures are portrayed as an abandonment of socialism, but in Cuba are discussed in terms of historic socialist debates about distribution and the balance of moral and material incentives at work, in a society still characterized by common ownership, social protection, and collective debate.
Reforms proposed at the Sixth Communist Party Congress represent a new, third phase of social policy in post-revolutionary Cuba. This new stage has the potential to strengthen social equity in Cuba, improve the socio-economic situation of disparate social groups, and overcome the old limitations of social policy. Yet it could also increase inequality, and at least in the short term, its predicted impacts will be contradictory and ambivalent.
Examines the extent to which publicly-listed Caribbean companies provide social and environmental disclosures, and the factors related to their disclosure practices. It is motivated by the dearth of studies of social and environmental disclosures among publicly listed Caribbean firms.
Provides a brief background of Haiti's economic development over the last several decades, along with the status of women's rights and gender-differentiated socioeconomic outcomes. Analyzes how policy neglect of gender equity in Haiti has contributed to failed economic development and identifies ways that other developing countries have successfully incorporated a focus on gender equity in their development strategy, particularly in the face of natural disaster and financial crisis.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Organisation de Cooperation et de Developpement Economiques
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
164 p., Even in the midst of a global financial crisis, Latin American and Caribbean economies find themselves in better condition than in years past. Latin America must seize this opportunity to design and implement good public policies. The greatest of the long-term objectives of Latin American states remains development: economic growth and structural change that is rapid, sustainable and inclusive. In particular, governments must reduce inequalities in income, public-service delivery and opportunities, as well as promote the diversification of economies, often concentrated on a few primary-product exports. Improved efficiency of public administration is crucial to address both the short-term and long-term dimensions of these challenges. The real change, however, will come if Latin American and Caribbean states carry out meaningful fiscal reforms, making them not only more efficient but also more effective.
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
323 p., Despite sustained economic growth at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, Latin America and the Caribbean still faces high inequality and weak indicators of well-being among certain population groups. Women, people of African ancestry, and indigenous peoples are often at the bottom of the income distribution. The share of female-headed households rose in the past 20 years. By the beginning of the 1990s, women headed 1.2 percent of complete households (households in which both husband and wife are present) and 79.8 percent of single- head households. This book presents a regional overview of gender and ethnic disparities in labor earnings during this last turn of the century. Latin America and the Caribbean provide a rich environment for studying social inequality, because historical inequalities along gender and ethnic lines persist, despite positive indicators of economic development.
Examines social indicators of development and manifestations of poverty in Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic; profiles the poor, including geographic distribution, education, ethnicity, and consumption patterns.
Demonstrate how the priority of education in Cuban social policy, from its outset after the 1959 revolution, has privileged women. Statistics chart the rapid increase in educational level and attainment over the decades and the high degree of feminization of higher education and thus the skilled labor force; and today Cuba ranks among the countries with the highest indicators in the United Nations' Millennium Goals with respect to education and gender equity.
