The Count

0...

...is the number of consistent and up to date estimates of social mobility for Latin America. That's right folks, there's a real poverty of information out there and although the Count is an expert counter, he's having a hard time on this one.

Why social mobility you might ask? Well, as I'm sure you all know, Latin America has the worst income distribution in the world and if there's anything liberals like to tout it's that inequality is acceptable so long as there's social mobility. That is, who cares if there are tremendous gaps between the rich and poor so long as people born at the bottom are able to move to the top? (well, I do, but that's a different story)

In any case, last week the Count told us about the state of "human opportunity" in Latin America, showing us that although the region has a long way to go, most countries have made significant progress in achieving universal coverage of the most basic services children need in order to have an opportunity for success. But how does having access to basic services associated with "opportunity" actually translate into upward social mobility? In other words, it is one thing to have access to schooling, clean drinking water, etc. but quite another to actually be born poor and climb up the income ladder.

So instead of measuring access to services that are expected to create equal opportunity and lead to social mobility, as the World Bank's human opportunity index does, why not measure social mobility directly?

Well, because it is extremely difficult to get the data and especially so in developing countries. And even when we have good data, there are several conceptual challenges involved: do we care about intra or inter-generational mobility? (that is, changes in income within one's lifetime or from one generation to the next) Should mobility be defined purely in income terms or should it be defined using softer and often subjective variables like empowerment or self-worth?

On the data front the difficulties are equally large. To measure social mobility you need very detailed data sets that follow individuals through large chunks of time. In other words, you need to survey someone in their youth and follow up on them during their adult life. Any other approach would be a statistical abstraction. Also, to allow international comparisons it would be preferable to have comparable methodologies, something that is rarely the case.

And yet in spite of these tremendous difficulties, there are some estimates out there. The graph below is from a paper published by the World Bank in 2001 by Lykke Andersen. It's one of the few cross-country studies on Latin America out there.
Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru come out on top with the highest estimated social mobility, while Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador are at the bottom. Of course, these numbers are based on urban surveys and as such don't capture the whole reality of the countries in question, but they're nevertheless useful for broad comparisons.

But how does Latin America stack up against developed countries and in particular the US? This second graph below combines more recent and country specific estimates from Chile, Brazil and Peru with estimates for some developed countries.
In this case Chile, the UK and the US exhibit comparable levels of social mobility, which is either very flattering for Chile or very, very unflattering for the US and UK, the supposed bastions of liberal democracy and economic opportunity. Of course, note how far off these countries are from the more civilized nordic countries or Canada for that matter.

But it is worth mentioning that these numbers aren't comparable at all to the social mobility index in the previous graph--pointing to the shortcomings of consistent estimates noted above. Also, as someone who's lived in Canada, the US and Chile, I find these results very hard to believe. While the gap between Canada and the US makes perfect sense, such a small gap between Chile and the US is rather hard to swallow given the intense social stratification and pervasive class mentality anyone who's spent any time in Chile could tell you about.

Now, I'm obviously not saying this to defend the US, which clearly has very serious social mobility issues, but if these numbers come close to reality then Chile has made some serious social progress.

The Count

24...

...is the average number of years it'll take Latin American and Caribbean countries to achieve universal access to the most basic human services. Or at least according to the World Bank's 2010 Human Opportunity Index Report.

That's right, the new Human Opportunity Index report is out and it's pretty safe to say that it's a development-minded nerd's wet dream. The HOI is essentially a measure of access to basic services, including education, housing, water and electricity, taking into account how equitably or fairly these are distributed. Or, in the words of the World Bank's poverty reduction director, Marcelo Giugale:

"What we are measuring here is: are the doors of development open to all before the game starts?"

Countries get positive scores for higher coverage rates but get penalized for the inequality of coverage. If a country has a decent level of access to education but the bulk of those excluded belong to a particular marginalized social group, the country would earn a lower HOI score than a country with a similar level of access but more equitable distribution.

As can be seen below, the countries in the region with the top HOI are, in order, Chile (95), Uruguay (92), Mexico (90), Costa Rica (89) and Venezuela (89). Honduras is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, scoring a depressing score of 51.

[2010 Human Opportunity Index]

What's more, most countries have seen their HOI score grow significantly. Chile, for instance, went from 83 in 1996 t0 a score of 95 this year. The country with the fastest growing HOI, quite surprisingly, was Mexico, going from a low 65 in 1996 to its impressive 90 this year, an annual rate of 1.74.

Now this takes us to this week's count, 24, at the top. The average annual HOI growth rate for all of Latin America and the Caribbean is .99. At this rate it would take the region 24 years to achieve universal coverage of all the basic necessities, or an HOI score of 100. Put this way, the region still has a long way to go, despite all it's great progress lately (of course, this is based on the rather simple assumption that coverage increases linearly--at a steady rate).

But there's more sobering news in the report. The gap between rural and urban areas remains very large. What's interesting though is that this gap is smaller in countries with higher national HOI scores, suggesting the existence of what one might call an "opportunity spillover." Another thing to keep in mind is that Latin America and the Caribbean are still far from HOI levels observed in developed countries (with the exception of access to uncrowded living conditions in a few cases).

Also, the report decomposes the changes in the national HOI score into "compositional" and "scale" effects--that is, into how much of the change is due to an overall increase in coverage or to a fairer distribution of coverage. To quote the report:

"For all their efforts, LAC governments have, in general, not made much progress improving equity. Only a tenth of the average improvement in HOI is attributable to a fairer allocation of services, that is, to better social targeting of public expenditures."

In other words, most of the improvement in the HOI score is due to increases in the number of people covered, not the fairness of coverage. Moreover, this type of change can be in large part attributed to migration from rural to urban centers.