This is a response to Arminio Fraga's 2004 article "Latin America Since the 1990s: Rising from the Sickbed?" published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
The article discusses Latin America's development and uses data like GDP per capita, inflation, school enrollment, and life expectancy to show how conditions improved in the 1990s compared to the 1980s. The 1980s were known as the "lost decade" for Latin America because of debt and declining GDP, with many banks and currencies collapsing. The growth in the 1990s came from the Washington Consensus, which meant tighter budgets and increased trade, and it brought down inflation and stabilized currencies. People's lives also improved with fewer kids dying young and increased literacy. On the other hand, productivity didn't grow much and there was still inequality, with countries like Argentina and Venezuela continually experiencing crises. For real long term growth, Latin America needs to stick with reforms and build better institutions to avoid going back to populism.
Even though growth was uneven, I think Latin America was better off in the 1990s compared to the 1980s. The article does a good job pairing data with economic analysis, especially with how it explained the damage populism caused compared to the stability that reforms brought. The Chile and Mexico examples compared to Argentina and Venezuela's struggles helped make it easier to understand. One critique is that the article mostly talks about reforms in Latin America but doesn't connect them to what was happening in the rest of the world. It doesn't go into depth about global trade and new technology which had a strong impact on growth.
The question I'm left with is why productivity didn't improve even though education and health did. Life expectancy and literacy rates increased, which usually translates into faster growth like in East Asia, but it didn't in Latin America. If the economy isn't growing even though people are healthier and more educated, then the region isn't making the most out of its human capital. Looking at the types of jobs, rural versus urban areas, and how the labor market changed across the two decades could help explain the gap.