ABSTRACT
The conclusion notes persistent underdevelopment in Latin America's economic history since independence. Whether measured by production efficiency, literacy rates, or mortality, the region has often underperformed relative to global expectations. It notes ways in which continued commodity exports, large debt burdens, persistent volatility, and a tendency to marginalize certain populations contributed to that underperformance. The conclusion also highlights how the region's dramatic urbanization in the twentieth century contributed to increasing informality in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In noting that development is a constructed term, whose meaning will change in the future, it proposes two likely areas where economic history will expand: the intersection of economic and environmental history and that of (im)migration and economic history.
