 The project is focused on trying to find explanations for the very sustained decline in inequality in Latin America, particularly over the last decade. In the majority of Latin American countries, inequality has declined consistently since around 2000-2002. And in some countries, like Brazil, it has declined by a significant amount. If you measure it in terms of the gene coefficient over a period of 10 years, it would be an understatement to say that this decline in inequality has taken everyone by surprise, including Latin Americans. Because if you look at the previous 50-60 years, wherever we have data, it has shown that inequality has been increasing all the while. So it has been pretty surprising. And what the project does is to look for potential explanations for the decline of inequality in the region to try to understand what Latin Americans are doing different now than they used to. What is change in terms of the... Is it changes in the structure of the economy, the structure of society, the kind of opportunities that people have? There is a very excellent study, but not elastic, and she's got the whole project looking at different countries, and she's also contributing to this book. She reckons that education has a really important role to play, especially the interaction between education and labour markets. The returns to skilled labour in Latin America have been falling, partly because the supply of skilled labour has been rising. And so that generates a tendency towards equality. The other issue, which Andrea Cornier, who is the main leader on this project, the other issue that he raises is fiscal stabilisation, what he finds really different about the Latin American economies and the way governments run the economy is that they have stuck to pretty good fiscal rules. They have invented increasing inflation and so on that affect the poor adversely. So I think those factors are important. The dimension that I'm particularly interested in is the role of social policy, because there has been a change of a degree type in terms of the kind of social policies that Latin American governments have introduced in the last 15 years or so. And I think that the changes in social policy have had an impact on opportunities more widely in society, and they have improved the position of low-income groups, some particularly informal workers, they have strengthened their capacity to be productive, and all that has rebounded on inequality. Of course, in terms of international policy discussions, there is a lot of interest on conditional cash transfer programs, which in my view should be called human development cash transfer programs because they aim to improve the kind of human capital, particularly of children. But there is also a range of other types of social policies, improvements in healthcare, improvements in education, improvements in support for all the people, particularly children. All those have had the effect of improving the opportunities of the particularly the younger cohorts as they join the labour market. In some countries you can actually point to specific events, specific moments that can give you an insight into these social contracts. Brazil is a really interesting case. They had 20 years of dictatorship, up to 1985. When democracy was restored, there was an agreement within the country for most sectors that they need a new social contract. They organized a constituent assembly, and in 1988 they had a new constitution. The new constitution established the principle that people had a right to social protection, they had a right to an adequate level of healthcare and education, for example. And that over the next kind of five years initiated a lot of kind of policy developments. The big change from my perspective is that the constitution says the government is responsible for poverty in this country, right? And these are the rights, so it's a rights-based approach. There is a level of responsibility and accountability on the part of government. I think that a similar process is taking place in other developing countries, and also in Latin America. I mean, I guess, outside of the Ducal Point to Korea after the 1997 crisis, South Africa after the fall of apartheid. So you have these kind of moments that give you an insight into this. Most other Latin American countries have done this, but it's much more gradual and perhaps less directly observable way. But nonetheless it's there, and the turn to the left as people describe it in Latin America is perhaps a reflection of that. If you look at the budgets that human development cash transfer programs absorb in Latin America, they are very small relative to GDP. So that, for example, Brazil's Bolsa Familia or Mexico's Opportunidades take only 0.5% of GDP. So they are very effective for the kind of resources that are put into them. And I think that that would be a lesson for countries in Africa. Let me tell you that many countries in Africa spend much more than 0.5% of GDP in anti-poverty programs. If you include, for example, aid funding, Malawi, for example, spends about 4.1% on anti-poverty transfer programs, Ethiopia, about the same amount. Remember, it's about eight times the kind of budget of Bolsa Familia. Of course, GDPs are smaller in Africa. So I don't think the issue is financial. The issue, from my perspective, is much more political, in the sense that there is no consensus around the view that governments should address poverty reduction. For a number of reasons. I mean, aid hasn't been very helpful. And many kind of policymakers have, as it were, exported poverty reduction. It has become the role of donors to do poverty reduction in Africa rather than the role of governments. And I think that some types of political regimes in Africa also meditate against strong drive in terms of anti-poverty reduction. So I think that they are feasible, and I think the issue is much more a political one. I have, over time, collaborated with a number of UN agencies and bilaterals. It seems to me that what is different about my collaboration with UNIWIDER is the kind of focus on research, first of all, and the kind of openness in terms of the policy agenda. I think if you look at the output of UNIWIDER over a period of time, you'll see contributions that have been made on a range of relevant areas. Which, I mean, in most other UN agencies, I guess, even when you look just at the research departments or the research focus parts of the UN, you don't have that kind of coverage of different issues. The other point that is really important is that there is a sense in UNIWIDER work to bring together basically researchers working on developing countries in the south and to create networks and collaborations that would lead to kind of cross-fertilization of research across regions. I mean, for example, the DFID really supports any work on Latin America because they are focused on low-income countries. And if you look at all the different agencies, they all have a different take on this. So I think the fact that you have this kind of wide network of collaboration across the south is really important.