Escaping the Poverty Trap: Investing in Children in Latin America

Date
Jan 2003
EDITOR
Morán, Ricardo
Escaping the Poverty Trap proposes early childhood investment policies that could decisively change the prospects for the next generation of the region's poor. Contributors include Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and Gro Harlem Brundtland, former director-general of the World Health Organization. In examining the effects of family background on ITP in 16 Latin American countries, the study emphasizes that conception through preschool is when vulnerability to lifetime damage is greatest, but also when there is the most potential for cost-effective interventions to break out of that destructive cycle. Insufficient education is cited as the principal vector of poverty throughout the life cycle and across generations.