Martín Hopenhayn, Director of ECLAC Division for Social Development:

Employment and Social Protection, the Missing Links

Photo: Lorenzo Moscia/ECLAC

Employment and social protection in Latin America and the Caribbean are two fields which are widely studied by ECLAC due to their connection with the reproduction of poverty and inequality. However, these issues, which are crucial for development with equality in the region, have usually been analysed separately.

In the latest ECLAC document, Time for equality: closing gaps, opening trails, our current route map, we strive to tackle regional problems in an articulated manner and outline specific alternatives of development policies.

This report empirically illustrates the way in which economic, labour, social and territorial inequalities, among others, are interrelated, placing the State at the centre of the strategies for reducing these gaps in the region in the medium- and long-term.

Following this analytical approach, today ECLAC is carrying out an in-depth study of the links between employment and social protection in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the way in which they give rise to and transmit inequalities in the coordination of these two areas. We believe that this approach strengthens the bridges between the assessment and development of effective policies.

However, a third link must be added to the chain when examining employment and social protection: the structural diversity of the countries, which explains much of the inequalities in the labour market. Greater productive and territorial convergence increases the possibilities of achieving more and better jobs.

If structural diversity can be considered the “starting point” in the chain, the labour market will operate as a hinge where the effects of structural inequality are moved to, the achievements in productivity are divided out, jobs and income are stratified and social protection is accessed. The latter is the “arrival point”, but also a new starting point.

Labour institutionality is the central gear used to transmit inequalities from one link to another.

It is about understanding the knots in the chain, identifying the vicious configurations which operate as transmission and playback channels of inequality, as well as the virtuous gears which enable it to be reduced.

This scenario requires specific and articulated measures which enable inequality in each one of the links to be reduced, as well as in the connection between them. We are talking about development and productive convergence policies, labour market and labour regulation policies and contributory and non-contributory social protection policies.

At the same time, these policies require favourable macroeconomic conditions and socio-political consensus in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. These politico-institutional capacities determine the countries’ space for designing and implementing successful policies which enable progress to be made towards better development with equality in the region.