Bipolarization and Middle Class in Latin America 2000-2009

Professor Jacques Silber | On Relative Bi-Polarization and the Middle Class in Latin America: A Look at the First Decade of the 21st Century

All invited to a special seminar 'On Relative Bi-Polarization and the Middle Class in Latin America' with Professor Jacques Silber in 8 June 2012. The seminar will be chaired by Sir Tony Atkinson and is co-hosted by OPHI and the Department of Economics, University of Oxford. 

Jacques Silber is Professor of Economics at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Economic Inequality, and an OPHI Research Fellow. Professor Silber’s new work provides fresh insights into inequality in Latin America, which is sometimes called the most unequal region in the world. The new work looks at socio-economic mobility and the middle class in Latin America (2000–2009), particularly changes in bi-polarization using Latinobarómetro survey data for 15 countries. Sir Tony Atkinson, Professor of Economics, University of Oxford and Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, will chair the seminar.

Professor Silber is a leading specialist in distributional analysis, with contributions in the fields of income inequality and poverty measurement, as well as discrimination and segregation in the labour market. His edited and authored books include: 

• Handbook on Income Inequality Measurement (with a foreword by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen), 1999; 

• The Measurement of Segregation and Discrimination in the Labor Force (with Y. Flückiger), 1999; 

• The Many Dimensions of Poverty (with Nanak Kakwani), 2007; and 

• Quantitative Approaches to Multidimensional Poverty Measurement (with Nanak Kakwani), 2009.

Sir Tony Atkinson is an advisor to OPHI and has been President of the Royal Economic Society, of the Econometric Society, of the European Economic Association, and of the International Economic Association.