ABSTRACT
Honduras is an unusual and paradoxical country. By a geological quirk, its soil lacks the rich volcanic material prevalent throughout the region's other countries. From the mid-twentieth century onward, Honduras' problems and patterns more resembled that elsewhere in Central America. The Honduran economy in the late 1970s lagged well behind those of the other four Central American Common Market (CACM) nations, which had industrialized more. Much of its new investment went into agriculture. Honduras' agricultural sector remained the largest in the isthmus; its workforce share only declined from 70 percent to 63 percent of the workforce between 1960 and 1980. Another way to examine economic class disparity in Honduras involves shifts in the distribution of income among classes. One measure of changing income inequality during the 1970s is the share of national income paid out as employee compensation. Honduras suffered from the CACM growth boom and the political and economic turmoil of the 1980s and 1990s.
