ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on ethnic and racial inequality in the Latin American labor market and describes a cross-national research using public data samples of the 2000-census rounds. The labor force participation rate is calculated by expressing the labor force as a percentage of the total working-age population. The chapter examines ten countries which included ethnic–racial questions in their surveys and made the data available through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series International project. The countries are: Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Uruguay. The chapter provides a reflection on historical and theoretical aspects of ethnic and racial inequality in Latin America. It is important to notice that the terminology used in the national census has several implications on the process of self-identification and on the measurement of ethnic and racial inequality. The chapter also describes methodology to assess the level of informality according to information available in the national census questionnaires.
