The Latin American Economic Outlook 2021: Working Together for a Better Recovery aims to analyse and provide policy recommendations for a strong, inclusive and environmentally sustainable recovery in the region. The report explores policy actions to improve social protection mechanisms and increase social inclusion, foster regional integration and strengthen industrial strategies, and rethink the social contract to restore trust and empower citizens at all stages of the policy‐making process.

After decades of stagnation, the size of Latin America's middle class recently expanded to the point where, for the first time ever, the number of people in poverty is equal to the size of the middle class. This volume investigates the nature, determinants and possible consequences of this remarkable process of social transformation. We propose an original definition of the middle class, tailor-made for Latin America, centered on the concept of economic security and thus a low probability of falling into poverty. Given our definition of the middle class, there are four, not three, classes in Latin America. Sandwiched between the poor and the middle class there lies a large group of people who appear to make ends meet well enough, but do not enjoy the economic security that would be required for membership of the middle class. We call this group the 'vulnerable'. In an almost mechanical sense, these transformations in Latin America reflect both economic growth and declining inequality in over the period. We adopt a measure of mobility that decomposes the 'gainers' and 'losers' in society by social class of each household. The continent has experienced a large amount of churning over the last 15 years, at least 43% of all Latin Americans changed social classes between the mid 1990s and the end of the 2000s. Despite the upward mobility trend, intergenerational mobility, a better proxy for inequality of opportunity, remains stagnant. Educational achievement and attainment remain to be strongly dependent upon parental education levels. Despite the recent growth in pro-poor programs, the middle class has benefited disproportionally from social security transfers and are increasingly opting out from government services. Central to the region's prospects of continued progress will be its ability to harness the new middle class into a new, more inclusive social contract, where the better-off pay their fair share of taxes, and demand improved public services.

The Latin American Economic Outlook 2019: Development in Transition (LEO 2019) presents a fresh analytical approach in the region. It assesses four development traps relating to productivity, social vulnerability, institutions and the environment.

Over half of all births to young adults in the United States now occur outside of marriage, and many are unplanned. The result is increased poverty and inequality for children. The left argues for more social support for unmarried parents; the right argues for a return to traditional marriage. In Generation Unbound, Isabel V. Sawhill offers a third approach: change "drifters" into "planners." In a well-written and accessible survey of the impact of family structure on child well-being, Sawhill contrasts "planners," who are delaying parenthood until after they marry, with "drifters," who are having unplanned children early and outside of marriage. These two distinct patterns are contributing to an emerging class divide and threatening social mobility in the United States. Sawhill draws on insights from the new field of behavioral economics, showing that it is possible, by changing the default, to move from a culture that accepts a high number of unplanned pregnancies to a culture in which adults only have children when they are ready to be a parent.

Education and Social Change in Latin America is a valuable addition to the area studies literature in Comparative Education. Torres knits contributions from recognized North and South American experts to produce a comprehensive tapestry of analyses of both formal and non-formal education in Latin America. The book constitutes an excellent example of the application of a broad social science perspective to the study of education, viewed as a constituent sub-system. The foci of non-formal education (Part I), political socialisation (Part II), and the impact of social change upon education in Brazil (Part III) facilitates a broad range of comparisons. A balance between the often-contradictory perspectives-economic, anthropological, sociological and political-provides the reader with a comprehensive “snapshot” of trends and developments in Latin American education during the crucial 1980s. This inter-disciplinary examination of aspects of Latin American education has a broad range of applications, ranging from introductory courses to senior seminars to a valuable research tool. What would otherwise be an exceptional book is rendered even more valuable by Torres’ conversation with Paulo Freire. While Torres is recognized as one of the foremost authorities on Freire, this chapter explores Freire as a human being, an educator, and introduces some of the contradictions faced by a world renowned adult educator who assumed the mantle of an administrator in the formal education system in his native Brazil between 1989 and 1991.

The volume takes a broad view of recent social, political, and economic developments in Latin America. It contains six essays, focused on salient and cross-cutting themes, that try to construct a thread or narrative about the highly diverse region, highlighting its main idiosyncrasies and analyzing where it might be headed in coming years. While the essays recognize considerable advances, they also point out setbacks and missed opportunities that have stood in the way of sustained progress. Strengthening state capacity emerges as a significant challenge.

Since the year 2000 Latin America has been at the forefront of a series of diverse experiments with alternative forms, pathways and models of economic development and at the cutting edge of the international theoretical and political debates that surround these experiments. Reframing Latin American Development brings together leading scholars from Latin America and elsewhere to debate and discuss the current practice and futures of the Latin American experience with alternative forms of development over the last period and particularly since the end of neoliberal dominance. The models discussed range from the neo developmentalism approach of growth with equity, to the Buen Vivir (How to Live Well) philosophy advanced by the indigenous communities of the Andean highlands and implemented in the national development plans of the governments of Bolivia and Ecuador. Other models of alternative development include the so-called socialism of the twenty-first century and diverse proposals for constructing a social and solidarity economy and other models of local development based on the agency of community-based grassroots organizations and social movements. Reframing Latin American Development will be of particular interest to researchers, teachers and students in the fields of international development, Latin American studies and the economics, politics and sociology of development.