Resource information
Indigenous peoples make up less than 5
percent of the world's population, yet comprise 15
percent of the world's poor. The indigenous population
of Latin America is estimated at 28 million. Despite
significant changes in poverty overall, the proportion of
indigenous peoples in the region living in poverty - at
almost 80 percent - did not change much from the early 1990s
to the early 2000s. Economic Opportunities for Indigenous
Peoples in Latin America moves beyond earlier work which
focused primarily on human development, and looks at the
distribution and returns to income generating assets -
physical and human capital, public assets and social capital
- and the affect these have on income generation strategies.
Low income and low assets are mutually reinforcing. Low
education levels translate into low income, resulting in
poor health and reduced schooling of future generations. Low
assets not only reduce the ability to generate income, they
also hinder the capacity to insure against shocks, thus
increasing vulnerability. This is especially true when
coupled with missing credit and insurance markets. There are
significant complementarities across assets, which imply
that the returns to one asset depend on access to another.
These synergies between assets accumulate the disadvantages
of the asset-poor in terms of returns to income-generating
activities. They also dictate policies that facilitate
access not only to one key productive asset, such as land,
but also to complementary assets, such as training and
infrastructure, which affect the returns to land.
