The Changing Way Governments Talk about Poverty and Inequality : Evidence from Two Centuries of Latin American Presidential Speeches

Calvo-Gonzalez, Oscar ; Eizmendi, Axel ; Reyes, German

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: POVERTY;    INEQUALITY;    TEXT MINING;    PRESIDENTIAL SPEECHES;    POLITICAL ECONOMY;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8311
RP-ID  :  WPS8311

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This study uses text mining techniqueson almost 900 presidential"state-of-the-union"--type speeches from 10 LatinAmerican countries from 1819 to 2016. The paper documents asharp increase in recent decades in references to povertyand inequality. The study's long-term view shows thatthe way in which poverty and inequality are discussed hasbeen changing. Using a Latent Dirichlet Allocationalgorithm, the paper shows that in recent years poverty hasbeen increasingly discussed as a broader multidimensionalchallenge that requires a variety of social programs.Inequality has been increasingly framed as an issue of equalopportunities, whereas previously there was a greater focuson social justice. The paper assesses whether the prevalenceof poverty and inequality in presidential speechescorrelates with measures such as social public spending, aswell as the poverty and inequality levels of the country. Itfinds that during the 2000s, the countries that discussedpoverty and inequality at greater length were also the onesthat increased social spending and reduced poverty andinequality the most.