EVELYNE HUBER PRESENTS her ongoing work, conducted with John Stephens, investigating the links between social investment, human capital and social inequality in Latin America.

Excerpt:

"Social investment targeted at all sectors of the society reduces market inequality, but in order to be highly effective it needs to be accompanied by redistributive measures that reduce poverty and inequality in disposable income.  To put it differently, effective investment in the human capital of the future generation requires improvement of the living conditions of the present generation.  We want to show further that effective social investment is crucial not just for human welfare but also for economic growth in the new international economy . . . These arguments are particularly important in the Latin American context, because historically both approaches had been neglected, and the progress made in the past twenty years might well be arrested when economic growth slows down.  Specifically, cash transfers to the poor might be vulnerable, unless it is very clear to policy-makers that they are an integral part of making investment in human capital effective and thus supporting economic growth in the longer run."

Evelyne Huber is Morehead Alumni Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of The Politics of Workers' Participation: The Peruvian Approach in Comparative Perspective (1980); co-author of Democratic Socialism in Jamaica (with John D. Stephens, 1986); co-author of Capitalist Development and Democracy (with Dietrich Rueschemeyer and John D. Stephens, 1992); co-author of Development and Crisis of the Welfare State (with John D. Stephens, 2001); co-author of Democracy and the Left: Social Policy and Inequality in Latin America (with John. D. Stephens, 2012); co-winner of the Outstanding Book Award 1991-92 from the ASA Political Sociology Section, winner of the Best Book Award 2001 from the APSA Political Economy Section, and winner of the Outstanding Book Awards 2013 from the ASA Sociology of Development Section and the Political Economy of the World System Section.