BIDAcademy Launches Podcast on How to Combat Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean

The new series will explore inequality, how it intersects with factors including gender and race, and how it impacts access to education or employment.

BIDAcademy, the knowledge and learning platform of the IDB Group – which consists of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), IDB Invest and IDB Lab – has kicked off "Rethinking Equality." This new podcast series will analyze the causes of inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, the reasons for its persistence, and ways to reduce it to build a better future.

Over the series’ 12 episodes on the "Voices in Action" podcast, Ana María Ibáñez, vice president for sectors and knowledge at the IDB, will host specialists and academics from more than a dozen universities to look at inequality in the region from different perspectives.

A new one-hour episode will be released every month. Each one will examine different studies by the Latin America and Caribbean Inequality Review, an academic network created to determine why there are still exceptionally high levels of inequality in the region despite major economic and social changes. The Latin America and Caribbean Inequality Review comprises the IDB, Yale University, the London School of Economics and the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Through the contribution of more than 60 academics, it has produced 27 research studies.

In the first episode, Ana María Ibáñez spoke with Francisco Ferreira, director of the International Inequalities Institute of the London School of Economics, who put the region’s level of inequality into context and stressed the importance of joint action to address it. The other participants in the series are, like Ferreira, leading world experts on inequality. The lineup includes Raquel Fernandez, from New York University; Orazio Attanasio, professor at Yale University; and Santiago Levy, of the Brookings Institution.

For decades, Latin America and the Caribbean has been among the most unequal regions in the world, and progress toward reducing inequality has slowed significantly in recent years. The series' different installments will shed light on all facets of inequality. Topics will include how family environment and early childhood influence inequality, the relationship between inequality and race and gender, the role of nutrition and health, and the ten paths to combat inequality in the region. 

"Rethinking Equality" is meant for development experts and public policymakers, as well as for a general audience. It aims to unravel complex concepts and data and present them in a clear way that a broad spectrum of listeners can understand.

"Traditional strategies like raising the quality of education and giving cash assistance to low-income households, while effective, are not enough to reduce all facets of inequality. In the podcast, we share, analyze and discuss actions to design public policies that truly bring us the outcomes we want," said Ana María Ibáñez.

The launch is part of the IDB Group's commitment to generating and sharing knowledge to improve lives in the region. Podcasts are a key way to communicate this knowledge because they can explore a topic in depth, while remaining flexible and easy to digest.

Listen to the episodes (in Spanish) here: https://cloud.mail.iadb.org/PodcastVocesEnAccion